


The Room Squared

by BeveStuscemi



Category: Silent Hill (Video Game Series), The Room (2003)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Fanart, Gen, God Bless Tommy Wiseau, Humour, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2018-11-19 17:19:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 34,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11318070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeveStuscemi/pseuds/BeveStuscemi
Summary: Johnny, once a successful banker in San Francisco, wakes up in his apartment in South Ashfield, only to find himself plunged into a nightmare beyond human comprehension. Locked within his own apartment with only a mysterious hole as a means of escape, Johnny must fight for survival in worlds plagued by evil to uncover the truth behind his nightmare. As Johnny spirals deeper into the madness, only one question remains;how is your sex life?In a rare moment of insanity and genius, I decided to crossover one of my favourite films (The Room) with one of my favourite video games (Silent Hill 4: The Room). I highly recommend both, if you get the chance.





	1. Chapter 1

”


	2. Chapter 2

Frank Sunderland mulled over the application forms spread across his small wooden desk. He had decided to reject five potential applicants on the grounds of their criminal convictions, poor credit score or due to the state they had their previous home in. He had pushed these forms to the side of his desk so only two application forms lay in front of him. From what he had gathered from their previous landlords and their interview, they were both good tenants with jobs and no criminal record. The first applicant was a man who was native to the South Ashfield area. He was quiet and soft-spoken with a keen interest in photography had informed Frank that he had recently acquired a job two miles out of South Ashfield as a nature photographer for a magazine company.

“So, you’re a photographer,” Frank had said at the interview. “What sort of things do you photograph?”  
“Local nature and wildlife, mainly.” The man had replied. “I recently spent a weekend in Silent Hill photographing Toluca Lake for the company. The place is truly beautiful.”  
“Yeah,” Frank had replied, with a ghost of a smile on his face. “It sure is.”

He had thanked the man for his time and informed him that he’d be in contact in the following weeks regarding the success of his application. Up until that point, the man, Henry Townshend had been the leading applicant for the apartment but that was until the second successful applicant was interviewed. The second applicant was warm and friendly albeit a bit strange. He was medium sized with dark, shoulder length straggly hair and a somewhat lopsided face. The man spoke with an accent that Frank assumed was from an old Eastern Bloc country but the man’s documentation revealed that he had been born New Orleans. Through further conversation, the man revealed that he was a small-time banker in San Francisco but had moved to South Ashfield after acquiring a job in a larger bank. He had also confided to Frank that he wanted to leave San Francisco after a painful break up with his fiancée.

“I am now looking for a happier life.” The man had told Frank, smiling. “I believe that South Ashfield can make me happier.” The man's unidentified accent tended to exaggerate vowels and over-pronounce certain letters all while maintaining a slight slur. Frank had wondered if the man had suffered a stroke at one point in his life.  
“Well, Room 302 is a little basic but with some updating it could look very nice,” Frank had said. “One bedroom apartments in South Ashfield Heights have a large spare room opposite the kitchen but our previous tenant, Mister Schreiber, plastered it up and we can’t knock the wall through without damaging the other walls. Obviously, we’ll offer Room 302 at a lower monthly rent until we can fix the issue.”

Frank rubbed his eyes and poured himself a glass of whiskey from the corner of his desk. The disappearance of Joseph Schreiber was completely unnatural. The man had locked himself away in Room 302 without any contact from the outside world only to be pronounced missing when the apartment was finally opened four months ago. Schreiber had littered the apartment with white candles and pieces of paper written in nonsense, which was creepy enough but what confused both Frank and the Ashfield police the most was, however, the set of keys thrown to the side of the kitchen unit. There was no way for Schreiber to have locked the apartment without them, so it was impossible for him to have simply left through the front door. The police eventually concluded that Schreiber simply had a second key cut and used that key to leave. When Frank protested, and said his skeleton key couldn't open the locked door, the chief simply shrugged and suggested Schreiber changed the lock before leaving. Frank had both keys tested once the police left and to his bewilderment, both keys fit the lock. Frank labelled it one of his ‘strange occurrences’.

Frank drank half the whiskey he had poured and sighed. Part of him was sick of being somehow involved in ‘strange occurrences’.  The sudden departure of the young couple in 1967, the disappearance of his son, James in 1993 and now the disappearance of Joseph Schreiber. Six years had passed since James had been reported missing and the déjà vu of having detectives and police in his apartment brought back the feelings of pain and confusion. Frank chuckled, remembering the second applicant who had moved to South Ashfield for a ‘happier life’.  
“You and me both, buddy.” Frank said, a small, sad smile on his face. Frank looked at the application forms for a second longer before hesitantly picking up one of the forms and placing it with the other rejected ones. He looked at the alarm clock by his bed, it was nearly nine. Sighing, Frank got up and reached for the phone on his bedside table and dialled a number which went to the answering machine.

“Hey Johnny, it’s Frank Sunderland. Anyway, I'm just calling to let you know that your application has been successful, Room 302 is yours! If you can call me back, I’ll arrange for you to move in. I’ll see you then.” Hanging up, Frank reached for the glass of whiskey once more.

“The weirdest room for the weirdest applicant.” He said as he finished off the drink.


	3. Chapter 3

The room was in complete darkness, but Johnny could feel a heavy presence before him, almost beckoning him to step forward into the unknown. As Johnny placed his boot onto the floor, two red candles either side of him ignited and revealed the dark stone path of which he was walking. As Johnny continued to walk closer to the figure, more candles set alight revealing dark concrete walls adorned with various paintings and religious symbols. Gruesome illustrations of murder and mutilation became more present as Johnny grew closer and the metallic smell of blood became more apparent.  
“Twenty-one.”  
Johnny turned on his heel, the pathway behind him was empty but the atmosphere remained heavy.  
“Twenty-one.” Johnny felt his heart begin to beat faster and adrenaline pump through his body. The dark figure stood behind him, but Johnny knew the whispers came from in front him.  
“Twenty-one.”  
“Twenty-one.”  
“TWENTY-ONE.”  
The whispers became frantic and transformed into shouts from different directions. Different pitches and volumes, men and women, young and old shouting the same number over and over. Johnny shut his eyes to block it out. Abruptly, the shouting stopped and Johnny opened his eyes.

On either side of the candle-lit pathway, bloody figures stood, deathly silent, staring at Johnny. Men, women and children stood in front of him, numbers carved into various body parts. The children’s skulls were shattered, a man’s torso was split open from a shotgun wound, a woman stood blue and bloated and one man’s neck leaked thick blood from an apparent strangulation. The candles blew out suddenly and Johnny was plunged back into darkness. Sweltering heat lay incident on his back and his body turned against his own will to face the figure once more.

Roaring flames leapt behind the figure, revealing his white, blooded robe but keeping his face in pitch black darkness. In the darkness of his face, two hazel eyes burned into Johnny and even in the absence of light, Johnny could feel as though the man was smiling.  
“Soon.”  
Searing hot pain flooded into Johnny’s chest and he spluttered for breath, collapsing onto the floor. In his agony, he watched the man walk into the flames, arms spread as he was engulfed into the inferno, skin blistering…

Johnny woke up, heart pounding in his ears. His hands felt clammy and wet and his naked body was covered in a thin layer of sweat so that his skin clung to the bedsheets.  
“Wow, what a nightmare.” Johnny murmured, as he pulled his sagging skin off the bed. Johnny ran his fingers through his tangled hair and sniffed his armpit.  
“Wow, being scared really makes you stink, ha ha,” Johnny said, speaking to no one. “I should go and get cleaned.” Johnny grabbed his silk dressing gown which was lying on the leather chair opposite his bed. As Johnny pulled it on, he took a moment to admire his bedroom. He had recently decorated and had a new aluminium double bed added, as well as a steel desk and the leather chair so he could go over paperwork in the evening. Johnny had even gone to the trouble to venture into independent boutiques and art stores to find photographs and drawings of spoons, which he placed over his bed and desk.

Johnny entered the bathroom opposite to his bedroom, which he had left untouched as the bathroom had only been updated three years before he moved in and he did like the beige colour scheme. After brushing his teeth, Johnny turned on the shower and jumped inside, scrubbing his body with a loofa and some soap.  
“ _I will stand in the way of a bullet, I will run through a forest of flames…”_ Johnny sang as he continued to wash his body under the warmth of the shower head. It was unusual for Johnny to sing in the shower but he decided that singing cheesy, early 00’s power ballads was the only way to drown out any recollection of his nightmare. After finishing, Johnny got out of the shower and dried off his body with an adjacent towel and brushed his hair before letting it dry naturally.

Naked, Johnny walked back into his bedroom to get dressed. Once approaching his small closet, Johnny settled on a pair of loose jeans, two belts (one of which was studded), a white shirt and a black tie. Johnny considered a black waistcoat but decided that it might be too much.  
“Wow, you look so sexy, Johnny!” He said to himself, a huge believer of self-love. In the midst of his self-approval, Johnny was startled by a bang at his front door. Confused, Johnny left his bedroom, passing down the white painted corridor where his bathroom was and into his living area. Johnny’s smile faltered when he saw his front door…  
Across his front door lay five heavy, brass padlocks connected to the lock on his door by a thick metal chain, which looped around each padlock numerous times, making it impossible to untangle. As Johnny drew closer, he noticed eerie scrawl in the midst of the lock.  
_Don’t go out!! - Walter_

Johnny’s initial thought was Denny, who occasionally visited him since leaving San Francisco. “Ha, ha! Denny, you are funny!” Johnny shouted into the air, expecting Denny to emerge from behind the kitchen island, laughing at his practical joke. After twenty seconds of laughing, Johnny realised that he was the only person in the apartment and his feeling turned to dread. Nervously, Johnny looked through the door’s peephole, and saw his neighbour, Eileen Galvin, who was picking up groceries that she had dropped in the hallway.  
“Oh hai, Eileen!” Johnny said, greeting his neighbour through the door. However, his cheerful greet remained unheard.  
“Oh man, I hope my luck changes before the party.” Eileen grumbled, picking up a tin and walking back to her room. Behind where Eileen stood, fifteen bloody handprints were smeared along the wall like a morbid painting. Johnny swallowed. The only paintings he liked were of spoons.

Johnny noticed a piece of paper had been slipped under his door and lay crumpled by his feet. On one knee, Johnny picked up the paper and read it to himself.  
_Mom, why doesn’t u Wake up?_  
Johnny frowned. This wasn’t something Denny would send him and it was too well written to come from Lisa. A second bang emerged from the bathroom, causing Johnny to drop the small note.  
“Wha-” Johnny ran into the bathroom, hoping that some of his toiletries had fell. Instead, he was greeted with a giant hole in his bathroom wall, tiles and rubble lay on the bathroom floor and a loose pipe hung out of the hole. For a brief moment, Johnny thought of Lisa. The hole was about sixty centimetres in diameter and the inside appeared to be made of cross hatched metal. The tunnel was in complete darkness, though a pinpoint light was visible at the very end, almost enticing Johnny to come inside. Distorted giggling and other strange noises echoed throughout the hole, causing Johnny to step backwards.

The sound of the phone ringing made Johnny jump. Rushing back into his bedroom, Johnny quickly picked up his landline phone on his desk.  
“Oh hai!”  
“ _Help…me…_ ” Feedback and distortion rang in Johnny’s ears.  
“Bye!” Johnny ended the call. He then remembered that he was locked in his apartment with a mysterious hole in his bathroom. He attempted to redial the number, but no sound emerged at all and further inspection revealed that the cord had been completely cut.  
“I’ll try to get help!” Johnny decided, walking over to his window. The window was an old-fashioned and was opened by sliding the window up but Johnny was finding it exceedingly difficult to lift the wooden frame. He had opened the windows last night, why were they suddenly locked? From across the building, he could see Richard Braintree from 207 watching television from his arm chair. Johnny began to wave his arms and jump up in a bid to attract Richard’s attention. However, Richard continued to stare into his television as if he couldn’t see Johnny at all.  
“Huh.” Johnny stopped bouncing, puzzled. The noises from the hole grew louder, luring Johnny in. He decided to take the bait.

Back in the bathroom, Johnny stood facing the hole, examining the damage. He then proceeded to pull the steel pipe out of the wall, giving himself more room to climb in. Johnny looked at the pipe. It was one meter long with a good thickness and fairly heavy, making it an ideal weapon.  
“If I beat someone with this, they’d have to open a hospital on Guerrero Street!” Johnny laughed as he gave the pipe a test swing. The range was also very good. He grinned before hoisting himself into the hole in front of him. The space was cramped and uncomfortable but Johnny began to crawl further into the hole and towards the white light. The surface of the hole was grimy and damp but Johnny didn’t mind, after all, he had coped with grimy, damp objects whilst working as a busboy when he first came to San Francisco. The deeper he travelled in the hole, the clearer the noises became. Near the end, Johnny could clearly make out a child’s giggle amid static and distortion.

A shiver ran down Johnny’s spine as he remembered the mutilated children in his dream. Suppressing the fear and shutting his eyes, Johnny pulled himself into the light and was immersed in powerful, blinding whiteness.


	4. Chapter 4

The next time Johnny opened his eyes, he was sitting on an escalator heading downwards. The building was drab and grey and Johnny recognised it as the subway station, where he frequently met Denny for days out. However, the air was stale and the atmosphere seemed heavier than on the occasions he met Denny. The walls seemed to have been stripped of any information regarding train times and the floor seemed dirtier. Moreover, from Johnny’s peripheral vision, he could see metal cages strewn to either side of the wall where vending machines or benches would normally be. Getting up from the escalator and holding his pipe, Johnny turned the corner, planning to venture to the Lynch Street line. As Johnny began to walk up the hall, he saw a woman standing by the second corridor. Slowly, she turned around to meet Johnny.

  
“Who are you?” She said, hand on her hip. Johnny took a moment to regard her. She was a beautiful woman with wavy, chestnut hair and full pink lips which complemented her dark eyes. She looked at Johnny playfully at first but as he came closer her seductive smile fell and was replaced with a slight look of disgust.   
“Oh hai! I’m Johnny.” He said whilst extending his hand, happy to have met another potential friend. The woman ignored it.   
“I’m Cynthia. Listen, I’m looking for the exit but I can’t seem to find it. Can you help me?” She relaxed her arm and allowed it to hang by her side. Johnny straightened up.  
“Sure, two is great but three’s a crowd!”  
Cynthia furrowed her eyebrows, slightly confused. “So, you’ll help me?”  
“That’s the idea!” Johnny replied, beaming. He was an old romantic and sucker for beautiful women and Cynthia’s poise reminded him a lot of Lisa when she modelled her red dress all those years ago.   
Cynthia smiled. “Great, I’ll follow you.”

Johnny, armed with a pipe began to walk towards the Lynch Street line with Cynthia in pursuit.   
“You know, Cynthia,” Johnny began, as they strode past congealed walls and torn posters. “After we get out, let’s go eat, huh?” Strangely, the smell of damp mould and grime made Johnny feel hungry. He always associated foul smells with Denny’s homemade stews which surprisingly tasted decent. Cynthia remained silent and her footsteps became heavier.  
“Hold on,” Cynthia shouted suddenly, bent over in pain. She heaved, clutching her stomach. “I think I’m gonna puke!”   
“Are you okay, Cynthia?” Johnny shouted back, rushing over to help her. She staggered into the female toilet, breathing rapidly.  
“Cynthia please talk to me, PLEASE!” Johnny yelled through the toilet door but no reply came back. Concerned, he walked over to the opposite wall to wait for her.

-

It had been over ten minutes since Cynthia had rushed into the toilet and Johnny’s boredom was beginning to overtake his worry. Thuds echoed through the wall in front of him and Johnny stopped leaning on the wall, ready to greet Cynthia. More thuds followed accompanied by a soft screech, like nails down a chalkboard.   
“Are you okay?” Johnny called but before a response could be returned the male toilet door swung open. A large creature with rotting skin withered and twitched on the floor, growling in agony. Its skin was pale green and covered in painful, weeping sores and its large tongue flopped lifelessly out of its mouth while its four legs convulsed. Another two large creatures emerged from the toilet, both blind and sniffing the air profusely. They began to sniff the corpse of the other creature, their mouths salivating in excitement. The creatures threw their heads back abruptly and elongated their crimson tongues. The tongues stiffened and dived into the body of the corpse, penetrating the broken flesh and sucking the warm blood that still flowed around the body.   
“Hai, doggy!”   
The ‘dogs’ looked up from their meal and snarled, arching their backs and exposing their tumour ridden bodies. They reminded Johnny of Claudette and her cancerous breasts. The larger dog took a step closer and began to snap at Johnny’s ankles, who was becoming increasingly anxious.   
“Please doggy! I don’t want to hit you!” The dog took no notice and began to lower its body, ready to pounce. As it leapt from its position, Johnny swung at it with his steel pipe which resulted in green pus flying out of the creature’s face. Terrified, Johnny ran into the female toilet.  
“What is happening?” Johnny yelled, shaken from his encounter. The female toilet reeked of death and the smell of rot was almost too much for Johnny to stomach. Johnny walked to the cubicles, hoping Cynthia wouldn't be too offended that he had entered the female toilet. Two of the three cubicles were missing doors but the third, central one was locked and Johnny assumed Cynthia was still in there. As Johnny approached the door, he soon realised there was another giant hole on the tiled wall. Unlike the hole in his apartment, the hole was perfectly round and the cement inside was completely smooth. Moreover, the hole was ringed with strange red symbols.  
“Another hole?” Johnny said, incredulous. “I hope it takes me out of here!”  
Without a moment’s hesitation, Johnny climbed inside, wanting to escape the madness of the subway. The world around him whirled and he seemed to be travelling too fast as he rounded corners and travelled up inclines. The world kept getting faster and faster until he was greeted by darkness.

-

The darkness slowly began to fade, and Johnny realised that he was staring at the ceiling fan above his bed. The fan rotated rapidly above him, blowing a soft breeze into Johnny’s face. Groggily, Johnny began to pull himself up from the bed.   
“Am I back?” He murmured. He felt awful, almost as bad as the hangover he had when Lisa gave him Scotchka that one time. He had woken up with a blue tie around his head and several buttons missing from his shirt, but that was a different story. Now, he just felt dazed and confused. Lying next to him was the steel pipe he had been armed with in the subway, still covered in viscera and gore.   
“Huh.” Johnny frowned, picking the pipe back up and getting up out of the bed.   
Walking into his living area, Johnny realised that the cabinet next to his leather sofa had been moved slightly and the photographs of spoons had been knocked over. Johnny paused, trying to retrace his steps but he couldn’t remember moving it. As Johnny pulled the cabinet back into place, he noticed a small object lying underneath the cabinet. He kneeled to inspect the small object and as he drew closer, he realised that it was a small pistol. Johnny’s heart beat faster as he held the dark grey 9mm in his hand. He had owned a gun back in San Francisco, but had left it in the box under his bed after he left mainly due to Lisa wanting to protect herself from thugs like Chris R. As Johnny tucked the gun into one of his belts, he noticed light pouring out of the wall. A small hole in the plastering allowed Johnny to see into his neighbour’s room. Squinting, Johnny peered in.

Eileen was sitting on her bed, craning her neck over to her bedroom door.  
“Where did I put that damn broom?” She muttered under her breath. After another second of searching, she stopped and faced the hole directly. Johnny held his breath, wondering if she could see him.   
“Oh, there it is!” Eileen walked over to her chest of drawers and picked up the broom which had been lying on the side of it. Johnny’s vision was blocked by Eileen’s denim skirt for a brief second until she walked out of the room.   
“Bye Eileen!” Johnny called after her but there was no response, almost as if she couldn’t hear him. As Eileen left to sweep the outside, the phone rang once more.   
Johnny scrambled onto his feet and rushed into his room, grabbing the phone frantically.  
“Oh hai!”  
“ _Where did you go?”_ The caller was Cynthia, sounding anxious and frightened. “ _Hurry! Save me!”_   
“Uh huh.” Johnny nodded.  
“ _If you need a token, there’s one here!”_   
“Ha ha, Cynthia, you think of everything!” With a huff, Cynthia ended the call.

With little time to waste, Johnny ran back into the bathroom, clutching his pipe for dear life and climbed back into the hole. The whirling resumed once more and when Johnny came to, he was back in the female toilets, standing on the filthy floor as if nothing had happened. To his left, a mannequin sat on the toilet with its hand outstretched. It bared a creepy resemblance to Cynthia and held a small token in her hand.  
“Lynch Street line.” Johnny read slowly. Lynch Street was the train platform Denny used to visit him and Johnny had sent Denny off so many times, he knew the station like the back of his hand. Armed with a steel pipe and 9mm, Johnny stepped back into the main corridor of the subway, bracing himself for another fight with the remaining creature. Thankfully, the other ‘dog’ had disappeared when Johnny left, leaving behind two rotting carcases each oozing foul blood. Carefully, Johnny tiptoed around them, scared that they might bite his ankles and ruin his Levi jeans.

The main lobby of the subway was also in disarray. The phone booth’s light flickered on and off, causing a dim green glow to reflect of the turnstiles and the floor was littered with filthy scrap paper in varying degrees of grey. Metal framing barricaded parts of the subway off, making it difficult to move from one area to another and almost fenced Johnny in, making him even more uncomfortable. The turnstiles were adjoined to offices with smeared windows and from Johnny’s view, they both looked empty. Johnny placed his small token into the Lynch Street turnstile and pushed through, cringing as it grated on its rusted hinges. Behind the turnstile was a flight of stairs, leading to the second underground lobby. The stairs looked completely normal, without any sign of vandalism or destruction. Johnny, perplexed, continued to down the stairs, holding his pistol just in case. As he descended further, a sharp pain filled the front of Johnny’s head and his vision went hazy from the pain. Gripping onto the bannister for support, Johnny noticed two figures coming towards him.  
“Is that you, Cynthia?” He groaned, pain searing through his head. As his vision returned, the two figures became clearer.

Two men, rotted and bloody came closer to Johnny. One was an older, African-American with grey hair and dark, lifeless eyes whilst the second was middle-aged and bald with thick, black sludge dripping from his feet. Behind him, the same sludge dripped from the wall, some of the goo still attached to his feet, then Johnny realised. _They were floating._ He side-stepped past them and into the landing of the lobby and took a step back, creating distance between himself and the two floating men. The younger man, with arm outstretched and fingers curled, darted towards Johnny, trying to grab his chest. Instinctively, Johnny drew his pistol and shot three bullets into the ghost’s abdomen.  
“Don’t touch me, motherfucker!”   
The ghost recoiled and groaned but continued to advance on Johnny, alongside his undead comrade. Johnny took another step backwards and stepped left, closer to the flight of stairs that led him to the subway tracks. He looked at the stairs and back to the ghosts.  
“Bye!” He shouted, as he sprinted down, deeper into the insanity.


	5. Chapter 5

“Hurry, save me!” Frantic screams of Cynthia greeted Johnny as he scrambled down the stairs to the subway platform. The platform, again, was littered in tattered and ripped posters, some of which were strewn on empty, wooden benches and on the side of the staircase. A train was stationary on the tracks, with thumping echoing throughout the empty carriages due to Cynthia’s consistent banging on the train door. Johnny sprinted over to her, checking if she was hurt.  
“Are you okay, Cynthia?”  
Her eyes were wide in terror and her chest was heaving from her heavy panting. “Someone’s coming!” She whispered, almost hysterical. “Please, open the door! Use the controls in the front carriage. _Hurry!_ ”  
The look of panic in her eyes didn’t need to convince Johnny that something terrible was afoot. He rushed to the top of the train, passing the walls of the subway which seemed be covered in what looked like rust at the bottom near the floor. Some lighting had collapsed and rested on benches, creating ominous shadows behind Johnny and the whole floor seemed to be covered in a sticky residue which caused Johnny’s boot to squelch when he lifted his foot. The front carriage door was mercifully open and glowed red due to the stop light next to it and Johnny quickly jumped inside. After pressing an assortment of buttons (which thankfully did not start the train), he heard the passenger door open and the sound of sticking heels making their way closer to him. Johnny left the carriage to meet her.  
“Thank you!” She panted, still out of breath.  
“You’re very welcome, Cynthia and keep in mind, if you have any problems, talk to me, and I will help you.” He placed his hand on her shoulder as reassurance. He then looked around the subway. “Shall we go?”  
Cynthia shook her head. “The employee doors are locked; the only way out is on the other side of the tracks and I don’t want to go back in that train!” She straightened her printed skirt, still anxious.  
Johnny laughed. “Ha-ha-ha, chicken, Cynthia, you’re just a little chicken! Cheep, cheep cheep cheep cheep chee-ee-ee-eep eeeeeeeeeeee!”  
Cynthia stopped fussing with her skirt and shot Johnny a look that was half furious and half incredulous. She bit back her anger.  
“After you.” She gestured towards the train.

The two of them walked down the side of the subway, looking for another opened door into the train. About two thirds of the way down, Cynthia noticed an open carriage, and ushered Johnny into it first. The train carriage itself was derelict, the seats were ripped open, the windows were covered in grime and the poles hanging over the seating were starting to rust. Johnny tried to open the door to the next compartment but the door had been sealed shut. A passenger door next to him was completely open and led to the midway between the two train lines, he jumped onto the platform and made his way down, looking for another door on the opposite train. At the bottom of the midway, before it was blocked off by a support beam, a door on the opposite train was left open and Johnny and Cynthia hopped in, hoping there was a passenger door inside the train that would be open. This time, Cynthia opened the compartment door which led to the next carriage.

At the end of the carriage, an elderly woman with pale, rotted skin advanced on them. She was small and slight with grey hair that appeared wet and veins of violet and blue bulging from her neck. She groaned, pointing at Johnny and Cynthia as she moved forward, levitating. The woman was soon hit with the end of the steel pipe as she moved another meter closer to the two. She moaned angrily as she fell and was then kicked in the jaw by Johnny’s boots. Cynthia completely froze in shock.  
“She’s cranky today, ha ha.” He pointed at the woman, shaking some dark liquid off the end of the pipe.  
“Yeah…” Cynthia nodded, as she climbed on the torn seating to avoid the woman’s still body. After another couple of minutes of darting in and out of trains and passing through carriages, Johnny and Cynthia eventually found an open door which led to the other side of the tracks.

The opposite side of the tracks was very much like the first, strewn lighting and filthy walls complete with congealed mould in the ceiling corners. Behind them, Cynthia tried to open an employee door.  
“FUCK! It’s locked.” She shouted with a shaky voice.  
“It’s okay, Cynthia.” Johnny said, still calm. “We can try the other employee door and then we can leave and go eat.”  
“Okay, okay.” Cynthia folded her arms to calm herself. “Let’s go.”  
Sudden, loud groans erupted from the side of them and black ooze began to drip from the wall and onto the floor. The black ooze was highlighted with tinges of dark red, making the ooze look like dried blood and unsettling Cynthia even further. She completely lost it when hands began to emerge from the holes and she started to run to the other employee door.  
“Run, Cynthia!” Johnny called as he began to follow suit and sprint behind her. A frequent player of football, Johnny soon overtook Cynthia and pulled the door open before jumping inside and falling over. When he got himself up, Cynthia still hadn’t entered the room. Opening the door a crack, he tried to look for her outside but to his dismay, she had completely vanished alongside the ghosts. There was a staircase opposite him barred off with metal framing but it was likely that Cynthia had squeezed herself through to lose the ghosts. Sadly, Johnny couldn’t fit through.

He closed the door and stood silently in the room. It was very small, likely used as an office given the cabinet and desk on the left wall. The whole room was tinged magenta due to a red light above the desk, giving the room an almost otherworldly vibe. There was also another hole on the right wall but Johnny decided not to use it and instead picked up some pistol bullets kicked underneath the desk. Security must be tight at train stations. There was also a ladder in the room which connected the Lynch Street platform to the Kings Street platform. Tucking the pistol bullets into his back pocket, Johnny began to climb down the ladder, leaving the pink room behind him.  
He wished he hadn’t.  
The lobby to the Kings Street line was Hell. The walls were _pulsing_ with blood and the garish red and orange made Johnny feel queasy. The tiled flooring had been replaced with metal grating and had been hastily covered with wood where the metal had broken. All furniture had been completely removed or had been stripped down to its basic metal framing and then splattered with fresh blood. Johnny needed no convincing, but when he heard the distant groan from another ghost, he bolted it over the unstable wood crossing and ran towards the Kings Street line, nearly falling down the stairs in the process due to the slippery texture of the blood.  He practically pushed the door open with his weight when he bombarded into it and continued to sprint along the Kings Street platform and the growling in his ear informed him that he had a dog creature in hot pursuit. He rounded a bench suddenly and drew his pistol, shooting the creature a good five times until it whimpered and collapsed in front of him.  
_“Johnny, I found the exit, come to the turnstile.”_ Over the intercom, Cynthia’s quiet voice echoed throughout the platform. She repeated herself once more.  
“ _Johnny, I found the exit, come to the turnstile! Hurry! HURRY!”_ She gasped audibly into the microphone and her voice then became pure, animal fear. “ _It’s him! He’s coming!”_ The microphone cut off with a screech of feedback and Johnny’s heart began to race. They weren't the only people in the subway.

He approached the escalator which led to the entrance of the Kings Street line and by the foot of the escalator, a small bottle of liquid stood.  
“Nutrition Drink.” Johnny murmured to himself. “Replenishes stamina, speed up recovery, 0.5 per cent alcohol! You must be crazy, I don’t drink!” Johnny placed the small brown bottle in his back pocket regardless and stepped on the escalator. As it moved upwards, Johnny noticed the metal grating alongside the escalator was starting to stop and exposed the wet, bloody wall beneath it. A muffled yell rumbled underneath the wall and a large creature, covered in thick, yellowing bandage covering its entire body shot out from under. Its arms were long and thin, complete with three deformed fingers that attempted to grab Johnny while he tried to dodge it. More of the creatures started to slowly emerge out of the wall and all were intent on hitting Johnny. He armed himself with the pistol but there were so many creatures, he could not hit all at once. A sharp pain hit the side of Johnny’s body and it took him a few seconds to realise that he had been flung to the top of the escalator by one of the monsters. He winced as he sat up, pain shooting throughout all his lower back and he hobbled up the rest of the escalator and to the landing.

When he was completely out of the range of the monsters, Johnny reached into his jean pocket and picked out the small drink from the bottom of the escalator. He unscrewed the top of the bottle and knocked it back in one. It was actually good. The drink was rich and somewhat spicy with a flavour similar to aniseed and not all that boozy. The drink got to work straight away and numbed the pain in Johnny’s back and gave him an extra boost of energy to climb the final set of stairs that stood between him and the exit. The lobby looked normal once again, no blood or gore smeared on the walls or floor and no monstrous creations lurking in corners or beneath the plastering. Hesitantly and feeling somewhat safer, Johnny placed his handgun back into his belt and walked up the stair to the turnstile. The first thing he was greeted to was a complete mess. Women’s cosmetics lay scattered on the ground outside the turnstile all having fallen out of a pink purse lying by the door. Red lipstick and dusty pink blusher were completely destroyed and the smell of perfume hit Johnny’s nostrils instantaneously. The door to the office which monitored the turnstile had a small metal plate on it.  
The plate was dark pink in colour and engraved on the front was an Aztec illustration of a woman.  
_Temptation.  
_ Slowly, Johnny opened the office door.

Cynthia lay on her back, in a pool of her own blood in the middle of the office floor. Her scarlet blood dripped down her face and soaked her clothes and was smeared on the office window, control panel and just about everywhere else. It pooled under the control panel and her small hand prints were imprinted on the windows, as if she had been thrown around the room mercilessly.  
“Are you okay?!” Johnny dived beside Cynthia, picking up her paling body.  
“It’s…just a dream, right?” She coughed, gripping onto Johnny’s shoulder. She struggled for breath. “I think…I drank too much last night.” Johnny held her more securely, preventing her head from hitting the floor.  
She gripped his shoulder tighter, her eyes wide in fear. “I…I feel like I'm dying!” She finished, half crying.  
Johnny leaned in closer to her, taking her hand from his shoulder and holding it and looking into her watering eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”  
Cynthia’s body then relaxed and her arm became lifeless in Johnny’s grip. Gently, he placed her hand on her chest as he lay her back onto the floor, sweeping his hand over her eyes to close them. The numbers 16121 were carved into her breast.  
Sadness overcame Johnny, as he knelt over her in tears. “Why, Cynthia? Why? Why? WHY?” He sobbed violently into his hands as the world around him began to disintegrate into nothingness. Johnny felt as though he was fading out of existence, away from the heartache of Cynthia and out of the subway entirely. His vision became faded and black as he lost consciousness of the world around him and white noise filled his ears. Perhaps he was dreaming again. Perhaps he was inside Cynthia’s dream. Perhaps he was the one dying…

When Johnny finally opened his eyes again, he was staring at his bedroom ceiling fan.


	6. Chapter 6

The first thing Johnny heard when he regained consciousness was the muffled blaring of sirens outside his bedroom window. From the window, Johnny could see an ambulance and police car parked next to the subway with two men standing by the entrance. He couldn’t really see the smaller one, but the man standing opposite him was dressed in a beige suit and holding some sort of identification. Judging by the situation, the man was likely a detective. Johnny left his bedroom and headed into the living room, hoping to get a better view of the commotion outside. White noise joined the noise created by the sirens and it was followed by voices from Johnny’s radio.  
_“Hurry up and get that ambulance! Quit yappin’ and move her already.”_  
A second voice followed, softer and shocked. “ _Damn, she’s got numbers on her chest too. I wonder if-”_  
The voices ceased and the radio was emitting static once more. Johnny quickly turned it off in silence, still reeling over the thought of Cynthia. Digging into his pocket, he found the Lynch Street token and hurled it across the room.  
“Haughhhh-augh! Why, Cynthia? Why, why?!”  
Johnny’s anguish was cut short by a growl from his stomach. Just how long had he been in the subway world? The clock read seven twenty-five but wasn’t ticking, so Johnny had no idea what time it was. Johnny mooched through his fridge, looking for something nutritious to eat. He had planned to go shopping today but the current state of his door had forced him to reconsider. There was a bottle of chocolate milk and a box of chocolates on the top shelf, a gift from Mike back in San Francisco, some salad and processed meats and a slice of cheesecake that Johnny had left from the night before. Sighing, Johnny helped himself to a couple of chocolates before checking the door. To his surprise, another letter had been slipped underneath.

 _Although the cult itself is gone, I’m sure the spirit of it is still alive._  
_There are too many strange things happening in that town._  
_I’m investigating two people. Or maybe should I should say just one. I’ve just about discovered what’s going on._  
_\- April 8_

Johnny reread the letter a couple of times, trying to decipher what the person meant.  
“Too many strange things?” Johnny reread over and over. “Are there other people trapped like me?”  
Johnny put the letter and the pink placard into his storage box next to the television and decided to venture into the hole again, hoping to snoop around the crime scene in the subway. He placed bullets in the front pocket of his Levi jeans, the gun in his belt and the steel pipe in his left hand. Upon further consideration, Johnny also decided to take the chocolate milk, in case he got thirsty when running away from monstrosities.

The hole in the bathroom had become considerably bigger, the edges were still uneven but the diameter of the hole had increased and caused further splits in the beige tiles. The metal grating had begun to merge with the concrete of the walls, but Johnny didn’t have time to ponder the architectural engineering of the building, so he slid in the hole on his stomach and began to shimmy his way towards the light at the end. As if on cue, Johnny felt like he was being pushed to the other side by an unknown force, similar to how a bullet is accelerated out of a barrel. The high speeds made Johnny feel nauseous and he felt his eyes close as he neared the light.  
“Augh!” Johnny groaned, opening his eyes. He felt as though he’d been thrown out of the sky and landed bottom first onto the floor below. As his eyes adjusted, Johnny’s heart sank. He was in the middle of a woodland clearing, sitting on a dirt path. On either side of him, unkempt grass grew and weeds sprung out in all directions, twisted trees stood next to broken, wooden fencing and were barely visible in the moonlight. A rusted gate was at the bottom of the path so Johnny walked over to open it. By the gate, two rocks were covered in untidy, red writing in a language Johnny didn't understand. The gate moaned as it was pushed open and Johnny continued down the path, which had now started to slope. At the bottom of the slope was a metal wall, prohibiting any further view of where he was going. Street lamps illuminated the path in front of Johnny, granting him just enough light to see the path in front of him so he continued to the metal barricade. The howling of wolves unsettled him slightly but he carried on regardless, hovering his hand over his pistol. The area past the barricade was completely different. It was no longer woodland, rather metal flooring with thick concrete and metal walls preventing anyone from looking in. Oil barrels were scattered in various places in the enclosure which made Johnny wonder if the place was an old factory of sorts. The faint buzzing sound somewhere in the enclosure also reminded Johnny of an old factory buzz saw.

Rounding the first corner of the enclosure and walking down the metal catwalk, Johnny realised the buzzing was becoming louder and coming from different directions. Walking down the staircase at the end of the catwalk, the buzzing became irritatingly loud and was then silenced by a yelp of pain from Johnny.  
“Ow!” Something sharp had just stabbed him in his shoulder blade and he turned around, pipe at the ready to attack whatever just sliced him. Five large bat-like creatures emerged from the shadows, humming violently. They all descended on Johnny at once, making it difficult for him to see the direction where he was being attacked.  
“I KILL YOU, YOU BASTARDS!” Johnny shouted, frustrated with the bats. With one mighty swing, he hit three of the bats who squeaked and fell to the ground.  
“AUGH!” Johnny’s foot came down on them hard and fast, with a satisfying crunch signifying their grisly demise. The two remaining bats hovered six feet away from Johnny, waiting for the perfect time to strike.  
“Oh hai, bats!” Johnny mocked, smiling. He readied his steel pipe as though he was playing baseball. “I have something for you!”    
The bats shot towards Johnny and he swung at them individually, one ricocheted off the concrete wall and landed behind a trio of oil barrels whilst the other simply died on impact. A morbid laugh escaped Johnny’s lips before he flung the blood off his pipe and continued to the second metal door leading out of the enclosure.

After leaving the concrete enclosure, Johnny found himself face to face with a green car hastily parked on the grassy hill. The front of the car was pretty banged up from a recent crash and the destroyed wooden fence confirmed that the car had been drove into it. Miraculously, the headlights still worked and the engine was still running. The car door had been left open and revealed pieces of scrap paper all over the grey leather seat and Johnny dropped his pipe to pick them up. The first piece of paper featured what looked like a diary entry, written by a certain Mister Jasper Gein. Johnny didn’t read the note too carefully but it revealed that the forest he was in was situated in Silent Hill and that Jasper had visited to contact the Devil.  
“I did not know Claudette moved to Silent Hill.” Johnny sniggered before putting the note back on the chair. The second note however, was far more cryptic.  
_If you bring the dug-up key, you can't go back._  
_Put it away somewhere before you return there._  
Johnny threw the note back into the car, unsure of what it meant. Part of him considered taking the car and driving out of the forest but he had no idea where he was and feared he’d get lost. Johnny picked up his pipe again since none of the other pieces of paper were of any use to him and walked back onto the dirt path and over to the gate at the bottom of the incline.

Pushing the gate open, the first thing Johnny saw was two boulders sitting directly opposite each other, illuminated by candles placed strategically on a wooden fence which created a small paddock to separate them. A small, flat rock was next to the boulder closest to Johnny and a young man was sitting on it. He was tall and thin, with a gaunt face and eyes ringed with black circles from lack of sleep. Closer, Johnny noticed the man’s T-shirt, which seemed to depict a demon of sorts and he assumed the man must be Jasper.  
“S-So y-you c-came to investigate th-this stone t-too…” Jasper looked up at Johnny as he walked closer, his fingers twitching nervously. “Th-There was another g-guy here before, a-a real nosy guy. B-B-But I was the one who f-found this s-stone f-first.”  
“Uh-huh.” Johnny leaned onto a part of the fence that wasn’t covered in candles and listened as Jasper continued his chatter.  
“I-In the o-old days the n-n-natives called it ‘Na-Na-Nahkeehona’. Th-They used it in a ceremony f-f-for talkin’ with their dead ancestors. A-And now th-those guys are usin’ it too. C-Call it the ‘m-mother stone’.”  
“Yeah.” Johnny nodded, still listening.  
Jasper twitched his head to the side and pointed past Johnny. “Th-They’re just u-up ahead in that weird building, o-operatin’ some kinda c-crazy religious cult.” He twitched once more before continuing. “They u-used to c-c-collect orphans and d-did things to ‘em. K-Kinda gives you the ch-chills, huh?”  
“A-ha-ha-ha! What a story, Jasper!” Johnny laughed, still leaning on the wooden fence. Jasper looked stricken at the word 'story'.  
“I-It’s not a story! Th-there were ne-newspaper articles an-”  
“Anyway Jasper, what is with all of the candles? Are you expecting a girl to show up?” Johnny said in a playful voice, completely cutting Jasper off.  
“N-No. I l-lit these s-so I could s-s-see what I was doing! I’m t-trying-”  
Jasper was cut off once more. “Whatever! Maybe you should get a girl, Jasper. Anyway, how is your sex life?”  
“W-what? M-My s-sex life? I-It’s o-okay…” Jasper said hesitantly, not entirely sure why the man had decided to grill him on his sexual history, or lack thereof.   
“Well, it seems to me that you’re the _expert,_ Jasper!” Johnny put a lot of emphasis on the word 'expert', which caused Jasper to jump. “I am going to go now, bye!”  
Johnny stopped leaning on the fence and straightened up. Underneath the fence, he noticed a small nutrition drink and stealthily placed it in his front pocket when Jasper wasn't looking. Johnny then sauntered past the second, larger boulder and opened the gate which led to the orphanage.

The orphanage was on a large plot of land, barricaded in by white, faded fencing over ten feet tall. The same wooden fencing used where Jasper sat was also used here, in a small, irregular path leading up to the front of the orphanage. Unlike the rest of the forest, the grass here seemed drier and less dense and a few trees grew to the right side of the path. There were some children’s toys thrown about but most were rusted or in a state beyond repair and Johnny was beginning to have doubts on whether Jasper was telling the truth on whether the place was run by a cult. The place was completely abandoned however and the orphanage sign was hanging lopsided on its stand.  
_Silent Hill Smile Support Society: Wish House_  
The orphanage didn’t look as though it supported smiles, the door was chipped and the outside walls uneven and in desperate need of some cement. Even creepier was the dim candlelight reflected in the shattered window, which made Johnny wonder if there was someone in there. On his right, amidst colourful children’s drawings was another hole on the enclosure wall. Johnny felt his pockets and they were full of things that he didn't really need, so he decided to go through the hole and put some back so he could travel lighter. Johnny climbed into the hole and allowed the whirling to commence.

The loud ringing of the doorbell was the first thing Johnny heard when he opened his eyes. Sitting up, he could see from his bedroom window that the ambulance had disappeared and that Cynthia’s body had probably been removed. In his living room, Johnny put his nutrition drink and some bullets into his storage box The doorbell ringing was becoming more frequent so Johnny rushed over to the door in a bid to get some help.  
Eileen Galvin was standing at the other side of the door, trying to look through the peephole.  
“HELP ME, EILEEN! PLEASE!” Johnny banged on the door with his fists, telling her that he was still inside and could hear her. She looked at the door, puzzled.  
“ _There’s something going on in this room.”_ She turned away from the door, so all Johnny could see was her brunette bob.  
“ _What do you mean?”_ A second, exasperated voice entered the conversation and the person revealed himself to be Richard Braintree from the apartment opposite. He looked as temperamental as ever, wearing his signature printed pink tie.  
“ _I heard weird noises coming from inside there.”_ Eileen continued, pointing at Room 302’s door. “ _Hey Richard, can you see anything from your window?”  
_ Richard began walking towards the door. “ _No. Everything looks pretty normal to me.”_ He began to squint through the peephole himself. _“The guy who lives here, what’s he like anyway?”  
_ Eileen wrinkled her nose. _“He likes really bad R &B music and I think he’s a florist or something because his apartment always smells like roses when I walk past. Weird obsession with spoons as well.”_  
Richard stopped looking through the peephole and walked back over to Eileen, hands on his hips. “ _Well, I’m gonna go call the super.”  
_ “ _Yeah, good idea.”_ She agreed, as the two of them walked out of Johnny’s vision.

Johnny frowned, disappointed that he couldn’t be heard and hurt that Eileen thought his pictures of spoons were weird. As Johnny was about to leave, he noticed that the wall opposite him had changed slightly. A sixteenth hand had been added to the wall in his absence and the blood still looked fresh, sending a shiver down Johnny’s spine. He pulled away from the door, unnerved.  
Johnny allowed himself to sit down on his sofa for a while, before he entered the hole again. The sixteenth hand had shaken him slightly and it made him uncomfortable knowing that there was someone walking around South Ashfield Heights with bloodstained hands. He grabbed the TV remote off the coffee table and pressed the on button but no image came on.  
“Huh?” The television was fairly new with good reception, so there was no reason for it to not turn on.  
Johnny tried twice more before giving up in frustration and throwing the remote back onto the table. Instead, he decided to turn on the radio and let music clear his mind for a little while. The radio was on a shelf in the corner of the living room and he switched on the electric plug and tuned into his favourite station.  
_“Are you yearning to spend quality time with a loved one? Do you need to relax and get away from it all?_  
_Come to Silent Hill for the ultimate peaceful getaway.”_  
At the words ‘Silent Hill’ Johnny unplugged the radio.  
“You must be kidding…” He said bitterly as he walked back into the bathroom.


	7. Chapter 7

Back in the forest world, Johnny noticed that there were another three doors in the orphanage’s garden which all led to different parts of the forest. Picking at random, Johnny decided to go through the door on the right of the orphanage, directly opposite to where he was standing. The door revealed the same dirt path that he had been travelling on in the other section of the forest, complete with grassy inclines to either side of him with fencing blocking him in. A small streetlamp alongside the path provided enough light for Johnny to see and at the far end of the path, there was large cave sealed off with a gate. As Johnny walked over towards it, he heard the familiar sound of buzzing behind him, followed by the familiar pain of being stung in the back. Two more of the bat creatures were at Johnny’s side, darting past him in a bid to confuse him and Johnny began to ready his steel pipe. In a grounded stance, legs apart and shoulders square, Johnny swung his pipe at both of the bats and sent them flying in the other direction. When he heard them land with a soft thud, he calmly walked over to them and stomped on them, letting their tiny necks crack under his boot heel.  
“Take that, bats!” He shouted wildly before regaining his composure and walking over to the gate. The gate was shut by a large bolt lock at the top of it so Johnny pulled the lock out and pushed open the gate, which surprisingly opened easily.

The interior of the cave was well lit, revealing pieces of metal scattered alongside the cave walls. Thick rope hung from the ceiling, kept in place by a metal pulley and some grating. There were more of the barrels in the cave as well, most of which were lying by an old water pump, illuminated by a dim light bulb. Behind the pump, closer to the cave’s exit was some sort of machine with thick steel pipes running underneath it and through the cave’s stone floor. Somewhere in the cave, Johnny could hear water dripping and he looked up, trying to find the source.  
“Haughhhh-augh!” Johnny nearly fell backwards in shock as he realised that barley one meter above him, a rotten, bloodstained corpse was entangled in wire netting. Heart racing and legs pumping with adrenaline, Johnny ran out of the cave. The area outside of the cave seemed to be on a small cliff overlooking a lake. A couple of statues lay in ruin from vandalism and weathering and a torch next to the cave’s entrance remained unlit. More of the illegible writing was on some of the statues and display signs on the fence around the outside. One sign remained clear enough for Johnny to read.  
“Toluca Lake.” He said, slowly. He’d never heard of it but then again, he wasn’t really a master of geography since his accent sure didn’t line up with where he was born. Apart from a medical kit opposite a destroyed statue, there wasn’t really much else to look at so Johnny began his departure back to the orphanage.

-

Having already investigated the door on the right to the orphanage, Johnny decided to investigate the one on the left. The door was next to the same wire netting used in the cave and someone had placed a small lamp on it, giving Johnny better vision of the area behind it. The lamp was too entwined in the netting so Johnny couldn’t take it with him so he proceeded through the door sans lamp. The next area was silent. Trees and greenery grew alongside the gravel path leading to the next area and a few streetlamps in the centre of the path gave enough light to reveal the gate at the end of the path. Though the area was quiet, it was apparent that something had been here given the bloodstains dotted around the path. This, accompanied with the distant howling of wolves made Johnny feel uneasy as he pulled open the gate.  
In the distance, Johnny could just make out a door in between two wall lights on a wall to the left of the area. The bottom of the area was fenced off with the same wire netting used throughout the world so there was little possibility of there being any doors or gates at the bottom of the area. The dirt path led in the direction of the door and as Johnny began to move forward, a large figure emerged from the shadows. A shirtless man, wearing ill-fitting overall hovered over towards Johnny, clutching a shovel in his hand. There wasn’t a great amount of distance between Johnny and the door so he decided to bolt it.  
“Bye, ghost!” He hollered, racing towards the door. The ghost groaned in response, possibly in confusion as Johnny twisted the door knob and made his way inside.

Johnny stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a little boy, no older than about six, standing opposite the door. The boy was nervous and shy, chewing his fingers and looking at his shoes. Johnny straightened up, he was a natural with kids.  
“Oh, hai!” Johnny said, as he went to go and shake the boy’s hand. The boy backed off and refused to look Johnny in the eyes. This made him wonder why the boy was standing here, in such a creepy place. There were graves scattered around the area and one of them had been opened, opening up the possibility of graverobbers.  
“Little boy, don’t you have something else to do?” Before the boy could answer, they were interrupted by the sudden appearance of Jasper who looked a wild mixture of excited, shocked and confused.  
“F-Finally, the Th-Third Revelation! S-Something’s gonna happen!” The little boy looked at Jasper with childish curiosity, mouth open and eyes wide.  
“Th-That n-nosy guy that was here, h-he said it too. Something big’s gonna happen!” Jasper flung his arms out as through praising the sky above him. “Finally it’s gonna happen!”  
He walked past Johnny and the boy, laughing hysterically to himself. The little boy ran behind him probably unnerved by the whole experience. Johnny, on the other hand, inspected the open grave in the centre of the area. The coffin had been brought to the top of the shallow ditch and the numbers 11121 had been painted at the bottom of the empty coffin in red paint (or what Johnny hoped was red paint). Finding nothing else of interest in the area, Johnny left and repeated the trek back to the orphanage.

-

Much to Johnny’s surprise, Jasper was waiting at the front door of the orphanage still twitching and mumbling to himself. Jasper spoke as Johnny climbed up the tiny staircase of the orphanage’s porch.  
“Th-Th-The d-d-door won't open...” The prominent stutter had resumed, hinting that Jasper’s excitement had worn off.  
“Th-That n-n-nosy guy g-g-gave me something really good, I c-could l-l-let you have it bu-bu-but not for free.” Jasper then took an interest in the chocolate milk poking out of Johnny’s pocket.  
“I'm so, so th-thirsty.” He moaned theatrically, never taking his eyes off the chocolate milk. Johnny took it out of his pocket and passed it over to Jasper who ripped the bottle cap off with such ferocity that a bit of the chocolate milk spilled onto the floor below. As Jasper greedily drank the beverage, Johnny remembered a fact his friend Mike once told him in San Francisco.  
“Hey Jasper, did you know that chocolate is the symbol of love?”  
Jasper stopped chugging the drink for a second and cocked an eyebrow at Johnny, his head still tilted upwards and the bottle top still at his lips. He was unsure whether Johnny was starting to come onto him, given that Johnny did ask about his sex life and now tried to hint that the chocolate milk was a symbol of his burning love for him. Finishing the drink off and shuddering at the thought of a naked Johnny, Jasper threw a shovel onto the ground.

“H-Here, take this... There's s-something written on it.”  
Johnny picked up the spade and read the bloody engraving on the handle.  
_Opposite where the lake and house meet, inside the hand holding onto the ground._  
“I don’t understand…” Johnny reread the engraving again but it still made little sense to him. Ignoring the clue on the spade, Johnny opened the fourth door surrounding the orphanage and assumed the solution was through there since he couldn’t remember seeing hands in the other locations.  
Only after a few seconds of opening the door, Johnny was attacked by a swarm of bats, each attempting to bite at his face. He managed to knock most of them to the ground with his pipe but shot a few more elusive ones for good measure. The gate to the next area was guarded by a dog creature which was coming a bit too close for Johnny’s liking. He quickly reloaded the gun before steadying it and firing four bullets into the creature’s skull. It fell and Johnny kicked it to ensure that it was dead. Johnny managed to make a clean run of the next area as it was completely empty and this led him to the third area of the section which had much denser woodland compared to the rest of the world. By the fourth gate, a few ancient trees grew and twisted roots were sprawled against the oak and in the pale moonlight, Johnny could have sworn they looked like arms.  
_Opposite where the lake and house meet, inside the hand holding onto the ground.  
_ “These must be the hands the spade was talking about!” Johnny said, kneeling down by the tree and beginning to dig around the roots. After a few minutes of digging, he heard a small metallic _clang_ and reached inside the hole he had made. He pulled out a small, rusted key.  
“Ah-ha!” Johnny exclaimed happily, standing up from his kneeling position. During his time spent digging, the area had seemed to become very foggy. There was a thick mist clinging to the ground and this made it very difficult for Johnny to see. He brushed it off as a weird nature thing and opened the gate to the previous area. The fog was still thick and there was a definite coldness in the air as though the world had just changed season dramatically. Still, this was a world of weird bat monsters, holes and other crazy things so perhaps the change in weather wasn’t as strange as Johnny thought. Johnny pushed open the gate at the end of the area and stood still. This wasn’t the previous area. This was the same area he had just left.

He shook his head, hoping it was some odd déjà vu but the location remained entirely the same.  
“Huh…” Johnny repeated his steps and walked tentatively towards the gate again only to find that once he opened it, the area repeated itself once more. Johnny tried this a couple more times before groaning in frustration.  
“I fed up with this world!” He shouted, throwing the small key. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, retrieved the small key and thought about what to do next. His next call of action was to walk in the opposite direction and see if there was anything in the final area he didn’t look inside.

-

The only thing inside the fourth area was a giant hole and some more illegible writing on rocks. Johnny gripped the key so hard it began to indent his hand. Why couldn’t he travel back? He was doing okay until he picked the damn thing up! Then, somewhere in the deepest crevice of Johnny’s mind, he remembered the note he found near Jasper’s car.  
_If you bring the dug-up key, you can't go back._  
Put it away somewhere before you return there.  
He had to put the key away before returning with it. Johnny thanked himself for being so clever for remembering and ran up to the hole, almost diving in it due to his excitement.

When Johnny came to, he was lying back in his bed facing the ceiling fan again and still holding the small key in his palm. Without hesitation, Johnny darted into his living room, through the key into his storage box and ran into his bathroom, back into the hole. For once, Johnny had never been more impatient to regain consciousness in the forest world, just so he could finally open the damn orphanage. As usual, Johnny was standing up when he opened his eyes in the forest world and miraculously, the dense fog had disappeared and he interpreted this as a sign that his plan had worked. He passed though the fourth and third area easily and when he opened the third area’s gate, he almost shouted in happiness when he saw the second area once more. Legs shaking in anticipation, Johnny sprinted back to the orphanage, panting heavily when he opened the door to the garden area much to the uncertainty of Jasper.  
“I solved it Jasper!” Johnny shouted, absolutely thrilled with himself. Jasper didn’t even bother to reply but shoved his tongue into the milk bottle, trying to lap up the remains of the chocolate milk.  
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, Jasper!” Johnny called, climbing into the hole where the children’s drawings were. Jasper remained unfazed as he stuck his tongue deeper into the bottle. Whether Jasper cared or not did not matter, as Johnny made good on his promise and was back in the forest world holding the key in one hand, his pipe in the other and wearing a triumphant smile on his face. He joined Jasper on the porch and unlocked the orphanage door using the key. The door creaked as it opened and revealed the inside of the orphanage.

The place was desolate. Old oak floorboards screamed as Johnny trudged over them and old furniture was covered in dust and spider webs, neglected for years. By the wooden display cabinet there was a scribbled note, half hidden due to the lack of light in the room.  
_Have you found Alessa yet?_  
_How’s Walter’s progress coming along?_  
The note meant nothing to Johnny, so he left it on the ground and continued his search around the orphanage. The wood boarding at the bottom of the dark green wallpaper was starting to rot and patches of damp were apparent in the corners of the ceiling, particularly by the staircase leading to a locked door.  
Johnny nearly had a heart attack when he turned around. Jasper was slouching by a floor lamp, creating dark shadows that made Jasper look like a monster.  
“Wow, Jasper! You sure did frighten me! Ha ha.”  
Jasper looked ill, pale and shaking as he glanced over ripped textbooks and dirty pages.  
“I w-w-wonder what they did here?” It was unusual for a man who claimed to be trying to contact the Devil to be creeped out by some tattered textbooks but Johnny didn’t push it any further.    
In the corner of the room, shrouded in a faded, pink tablecloth lay an old textbook, illustrated with gold lettering as though it was a holy book. While Jasper was occupied with the other texts, Johnny knelt down to inspect the book.

 _The Second Sign_  
_And God said,_  
_Offer the Blood of the Ten Sinners and the White Oil._

_Be then released from the bonds of the flesh, and gain the Power of Heaven.  
From the Darkness and Void, bring forth Gloom, and gird thyself with Despair for the Giver of Wisdom._

_The Third Sign_  
_And God said,_  
_Return to the Source through sin's Temptation._  
_Under the Watchful eye of the demon, wander alone in the formless Chaos._  
_Only then will the Four Atonements be in alignment._

Loud wailing echoed throughout the room and the undeniable smell of smoke assaulted Johnny’s nostrils. Head spinning, Johnny stood up to realise that the previously locked door opposite the holy text had been opened and thick smoke was seeping through the crack in the door. On the door was another placard similar to the one in the subway only this time it was green and depicted an insect like creature.  
_Source_  
Johnny pulled open the door and as soon as he did, he came to the grim realisation that Jasper was no longer with him.

Jasper stood ablaze, orange embers masking his face and his hands starting to blacken. In his hand was a candlestick and he carved the numbers 17121 into his chest making each slice deeper and more painful. Skin melting and hair burning, Jasper spoke between screams of agony.  
“I finally met him! The one the nosy guy talked about!” He panted deliriously, carving the numbers into his chest for the final time.  
“THE DEVIL!”  
Jasper collapsed onto the floor, his arms scorched and melting, revealing the pink, boiling flesh underneath. His head dropped forwards, lips blistered and split and eyes closed. He still held that candlestick and the flames continued to engulf him, submerging him in the fiery embers of Hell.  
“Are you okay…Jasper?” Johnny began to sway back and forth before collapsing onto the ground himself, letting the heat warm his body as the void took him once more.

  
To say Johnny was unsurprised when he awoke in his bed would be an understatement.


	8. Chapter 8

“ _A special news report: In a forest near Silent Hill, the burned corpse of a thirty-year-old male was discovered earlier today. The police have ruled it a homicide and are investigating. The numbers ‘17121’ were reportedly carved into the man’s body. Due to the marks on the victim, the police are investigating possible links to the Walter Sullivan case ten years ago…”_ The radio suddenly cut off and Johnny slowly got off the bed, mind reeling and vision still blurry. He could have sworn he unplugged that radio but after witnessing a man burn to death, he wasn’t entirely sure of anything anymore. From his bedroom window, the outside world look pitifully grey which gave no indication as to what the time was. Johnny collapsed back onto the bed, trying to make sense of the time.  
“It was night time in the forest world and Jasper was only discovered today so does that mean Cynthia died yesterday?” Johnny scratched the side of his head and then spent about a minute attempting to untangle his fingers from his knotted hair. “Whatever,” He said, standing up again, “I need to pee.”

To be peeing opposite a very large, ominous tunnel was uncomfortable to say the least. The distorted giggling was even louder now and there was the occasional whisper that made Johnny feel as though something was behind him.  
“You better not be watching me!” Johnny shouted down the hole, trying to frighten off some perverted, demonic creature that might be listening to him relieve himself. Johnny had brought in the steel pipe just in case something did try to attack him mid-pee and he still had the placard in his back pocket. He finished up and hastily zipped up his jeans, still not trusting the giant hole. The plumbing in the sink had been somehow damaged by the hole in the bathroom wall and no water poured out of the faucet when Johnny turned on the taps. Groaning to himself, Johnny opened the door to the hallway and towards the kitchen so he could use the kitchen sink instead. Whilst he was washing his hands, the sudden ringing of the doorbell caught Johnny off guard. Wiping his hands on his jeans, Johnny walked to the door and peered through the peephole.

Frank Sunderland was on the other side of the peephole and was now banging his fists on the wooden door.  
“ _This is the superintendent! Are you in there, Johnny?”  
_ Johnny began to pound back from his side of the door. “Help me, Frank! Help me, please, help me!” He called desperately between bangs.  
“ _Is anybody home?”_ Frank placed his ear against the door, listening for any indication that Johnny was still in there. He then delved into his pocket, fumbling for a key which he then pulled out and placed in Room 302’s lock.  
“ _That’s strange…”_ The door to Room 302 remained sealed and Frank frowned as he removed the key. “ _It’s the right key.”_  
Frank stood silent for a second, shaking his head at the door.  
“ _I’m…I’m sure I heard something in there.”_ He brought his hand to his chin as though he was deep in thought. “ _Yeah, that sound. It’s the same one as back then.”_  
Still looking at the door, Frank slowly returned down the corridor, leaving Johnny face to face with the bloodied wall. To his dismay, as seventeenth handprint had been added and the blood still looked fresh. Johnny felt the placard in his back pocket. This couldn’t be a coincidence.

Kneeling on the floor, he placed the placard in his storage box, next to the one he obtained in the subway. As if on cue, the noises from the hole became louder and echoed down the hall.  
“Uhhh…” Johnny got himself up off the ground and walked into the bathroom. The whole procedure had become a routine by now and Johnny hoisted himself off the ground and started to wriggle into the passage. About halfway in, the same whirling occurred and Johnny felt as though his whole body was being pushed forward like a bullet, twisting and turning through the tunnel with no control. Shortly after, he blacked out.

-

“Uhhh…” The first thing Johnny felt was the cold concrete on the side of his face, accompanied by the damp he felt in his knees. Blearily opening his eyes, Johnny realised that he was face down on concrete flooring and that his knees were in a small puddle of dirty water.  
“Yuck!” Johnny pulled himself up from the ground and grimaced at his dirty knees. The Levi jeans he was wearing happened to be his favourite and he’d picked them up pretty cheap at Street Fashions USA back in San Francisco a few years back. He hoped they weren’t ruined. The room was circular in shape, concrete walls curved around Johnny and were covered in metal grating. Dirty tiles provided a break in the grating and they ran up to the concrete ceiling which mirrored that of the floor. On the opposite side of the wall were various doors leading to smaller rooms. There was an overwhelming smell of rot and damp, the floor was covered in puddles of various sizes and patches off moss congealed by the doors. Johnny had no idea where he was this time.  
“Help me! Get me out!” Shouting ricocheted off the walls and landed in Johnny’s ears, causing him to turn around in shock.  
“I’m coming!” He called back. That wasn’t necessarily true. Johnny was already turning the knob of the door in front of him and making his way inside. The room was shaped like a circle segment with the same concrete floor and walls as the hallway. The room was complete with a bed, sink and toilet as well as a small stool. Johnny’s stomach turned a little when he noticed a noose hanging above the bed and over a note.  
_I’m sick of being watched.  
_ The room was plunged into sudden darkness when the small light above the bed was blocked off. Footsteps thudded in the room behind the walls and the light reappeared. Johnny’s blood ran cold as he came to the conclusion that someone was in the middle room and that person had probably noticed him. The room no other objects of importance, so Johnny left. He continued clockwise and entered the next room.

Congealed blood covered the middle of the concrete floor and vine like creatures surfaced from the puddle. Their bodies were thin and stick like but their heads were oversized, roughly the size of a child’s skull and they writhed around Johnny, preventing him from the other half of the room. Johnny craned his neck to see if any items or notes were past the creatures before he could attack them. He left the room without combat, since there was nothing important to collect. The next room had an identical layout to the two previous rooms, only a pack of pistol bullets was lying on the bed. Johnny pocketed the bullets and inspected the room for other objects. Graffiti was on one of the walls and was sloppily done as though a child had written it.  
_I’m being watched from the middle room._  
“Ha ha! I think I am too!” Johnny laughed nervously before leaving the room.  
The next door he tried was locked but a small note was left on the floor. The note outlined a child’s escape from their confines and described a certain ‘death chamber’ in the building’s basement. Johnny made a mental note to remind himself that the ‘death chamber’ needed a code to open, not that he wanted to go inside.

“He’s…he’s gonna kill me!” The shouting got louder and made Johnny jump. Continuing the circular path, the next door was locked and held a middle-aged man prisoner. The man’s eyes were wild in terror and he gripped the metal bars of the door so tight his knuckles became white.  
“Oh, hai there!” Johnny put his hand through the metal bars, hoping the man would shake hands. Instead, the man gripped Johnny’s hand and pulled his arm through the bars until his and Johnny’s faces were mere inches away from each other.  
“Walter’s gonna kill me!” The man whispered in a scratchy voice, his brown eyes boring into Johnny’s green ones, not once blinking. Johnny wrestled his arm back through the bars, still smiling politely.  
“Anyway, I am Johnny and I am going to go now. Bye!”  
“Don’t leave me!” The man begged as Johnny walked through a double door, leading to an unexplored area of the building.

The door led to a lobby, two doors on opposite sides of the wall and a hole facing Johnny. Another note was pinned next to the hole and Johnny picked it up.  
_To get to the surveillance rooms in the middle of this complex, you have to use_  
_the corpse disposal chutes in the cells. However, on the 1st and 2nd floors,_  
 _these cells are locked. That's so the kids wouldn't discover them._  
 _So you have to get to the 1st floor from one of the cells on the 3rd floor. I know_  
 _how to do it, but it's really a pain. Also, the lights only work on the 3rd floor._

“Corpse disposal chute?” Johnny couldn’t see how the owners of the building had managed to convince someone to build a disposal chute for dead bodies but he couldn’t really complain about architecture. After all, his own apartment was locked in and his old apartment in San Francisco which he dedicated years to decorating was now owned by the demon bitch, Lisa. The door on the left-hand side was locked, so Johnny had no choice but to go through the right-hand side door. After passing through the door, Johnny stood in another circular passageway, as though it was the perimeter of the room with all the doors. Johnny still held his steel pipe and he trudged through the passageway, vigilant of any monsters that may want to attack him. Luckily for Johnny, there didn’t seem to be any creatures and he happily continued down the hallway. That was until, he was flung about six feet horizontally and landed face first onto the metal flooring.  
“OW!” Johnny quickly scrambled to his feet and turned around only to be greeted by a second smack, this time to the face. Johnny landed on his bottom about another six feet away and waved his pipe at the creature that hit him.  
“Don’t touch me, motherfucker!” He yelled. It was the same creature that gave him grief in the subway escalator and Johnny was not in the mood to be hurled around like a ragdoll.

After reaching the bottom of the passageway, Johnny opened the door separating him from the basement at the bottom of the building. The basement was huge. It had another small set of stairs which led to a large landing, still made out of concrete with large grey tiling. A massive water wheel was situated in the middle of the basement, sectioned off with concrete slabs covered in tiles. Johnny didn’t know many buildings to have its own water wheel, so this was a pretty big deal. A lamp stood in the corner of the concrete wall surrounding the giant wheel and illuminated a sign next to it. Johnny stood about a meter away from the lamp when he heard the familiar sound of buzzing coming closer and closer to him. Automatically, Johnny readied his pipe and waited for the bats to fly out of the crevice where the water wheel was, hoping that only a few would come out to attack him. Three black bats shot out of the crevice and made a beeline for Johnny, humming furiously as they darted towards him. Johnny, who was still doing his signature baseball-fighting-pose swung at the bats and sent them flying back down the crevice, squeaking in pain.  
“Bye, bats!” The sound of Johnny’s voice boomed throughout the empty basement and he thought it strange that the water wheel wasn’t working considering the crevice below was filled with murky water. He brushed it off and instead regarded the sign next to him. There was a dark metal key hanging on the sign and written on the keychain was the word ‘Up’, most likely related to the locked door Johnny remembered being by the hole. After placing the key in one of his many pockets, Johnny skimmed over the message on the sign.  
_To turn on the lights in the 3rd floor_  
_cells, turn this waterwheel. Remember_  
 _that the water must flow in the_  
 _direction of the waterwheel. Of course,_  
 _you also have to open the sluice gate on_  
 _the roof._

“Huh?” He scratched his head through his tangled hair. Johnny was never very good at puzzles, he had struggled with the key back in the forest world and he had a bad feeling he’d do something wrong if he turned on the water wheel. Still, everything was worth a go, right?

-

Johnny finally made it back to the lobby with the hole after a gruelling experience of being battered and thrown around the corridor by wall monsters. As Johnny rubbed his sore derrière, he came to the conclusion that he hated the wall monsters the most not only because they were rude and aggressive but because they bared a striking resemblance to Claudette. Johnny unlocked the door and was instantly hit by a gust of wind which tangled his hair further. The wind was fast and had a slight taste of salt as if Johnny was by the sea and as he strode out onto the walkway, he noticed that the walkway had no barriers and that he was a good thirty feet over sea level. If he slipped on the wet, metal walkway, he’d be done for. Beside him, a red ladder was clamped onto the building he had just left and it dangled perilously over the side of the walkway, right over the sea below. Shaking due to a mixture of nerves and cold, Johnny began the ascent up the ladder, holding the ladder steps tightly as he cautiously moved his legs. The roof of the building had nothing of importance, apart from another red ladder, which Johnny then climbed. A second walkway spiralled around the tower building and a double door led to the second floor. Pushing open the heavy door, Johnny was greeted by a circular hallway in the exact same layout as the one on the first floor. The only notable difference on the second floor is that fat, slimy leeches were now scattered on the walls and floor, desperately trying to suck up any moisture or blood available to them. In morbid curiosity, Johnny stomped on one of the larger ones and the leech died in an explosion of crimson blood and foul smelling pus. The green slime clung to Johnny’s boots and he grimaced as he tried to rub the pus off with his pipe. It was no use. His boots were probably going to smell like putrid innards for a while.  
“I fed up with this world!” Johnny moaned, as he continued to scrub away the pus which only made the mess worse. He stopped after a while and started to open doors to the bedrooms where the children once lived. The majority of the doors were locked, save for a couple which harboured some black powder and more chilling diary entries from the children who had mysteriously disappeared. Unless a rescue boat had miraculously arrived and liberated the children, Johnny presumed they were dead.

He backtracked through the double doors and returned to the walkway and noticed that to his left was another red ladder, this one leading to the third floor. As Johnny squinted, he noticed that above that ladder was another one which led to the final floor of the tower. Remembering the note regarding the water wheel, Johnny climbed to the final floor to investigate the sluice gates and operate the water wheel. The top floor consisted of another large set of doors which had started to rust due to the wet wind and oxygen and proved difficult to open. However, once they were opened Johnny saw the interior of the floor. The floor lacked a roof and consisted of what looked like a giant water tank surrounded in a moat of dirty sea water. Johnny circled the tank and saw a rotary wheel behind the tank, presumably used for opening the gates and giving light to the rest of the tower. Without a moment’s hesitation, Johnny grasped each side of the wheel and turned it, cringing as the four sluice gates surrounding the moat opened with a painful squeal. The water began to pour down the hatch and Johnny could hear it cascading along the walls of the plumbing and splashing as it hit the floor below. Hands on his hips, Johnny started to laugh.  
“Ha ha! That puzzle was too easy!” He said, patting himself on the back. He then proceeded to leave, feeling a little too confident in what he was doing.

Naturally, this would come back to bite him on his wrinkly bottom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you remain unconvinced about the incredible acting talent of a certain Mister Wiseau, I present to you this masterpiece:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fqAFCb4-ec
> 
> Beautiful.


	9. Chapter 9

After successfully opening the gates on the top floor, Johnny had climbed back down the red ladder and opened the door to the third floor. The room layout was the exact same as the floors beneath it, same miserable concrete walls, same rusting doors, same fat leeches sucking puddles of water from the flooring. The only difference was now, Johnny had new found confidence after ‘solving’ the gate puzzle and he strutted around the circular corridor, shoulders back with a big, lopsided grin.  
“ _Receiver...”_  
Johnny looked around, startled at the sudden noise. The corridor was silent, even the occasional thud of footsteps and dripping water had ceased when he entered the third floor. He turned the knob of the door next to him and slowly pushed it open and peered inside. Nothing. Just a filthy toilet and sink and another bed stained in brown blood. Johnny closed the door, writing off the noise as part of his imagination. Shaking his head at his own silliness, Johnny continued around the circular corridor.

That’s when Johnny saw it. Two pale faces, mimicking that of a doll were staring at him from the curve of the corridor, both draped in the same tattered robe. Under the robe, two large arms acted as legs, with the bloodied fingers spread and taking as much surface as possible. Slowly, one of the arms began to lift from the ground and pointed in Johnny’s direction.  
“ _Receiver…”  
_ The large arm descended back onto the concrete and stood still for second. Johnny also stood dumbly, mouth open at the new monstrosity before him. It was more grotesque than the other creatures and lacked the human or animal form which still allowed the other monsters to seem _real._ Aside from the childish faces, the creature was a work of twisted fantasy. The creature lifted its other arm and without warning, took a huge stride towards Johnny, causing the floor to shake with the force it exerted. Any confidence Johnny had disappeared as quickly as it came and when the creature took another step forward, he lost all fighter instinct and instead pulled open another door and ran inside. The door had no lock, but he was pretty sure that the creature lacked the motor skills to open the door. The thing had its eyes closed and while it may have relied on other senses to locate Johnny, opening a door might have been too taxing for it. There was a large hole in the room’s flooring, leading to the floor below. The creature slammed its body against the door and the light above Johnny’s head flickered. This was all the encouragement he needed to jump through.  
“Agh!” Johnny fell through the hole and landed by the second room’s door. The fall wasn’t too long so he didn’t deal any damage to his feet and his shin bones weren’t poking out of his knees. There was another hole in this room as well. Johnny tried the door and was disappointed to find out that he was locked in with no other means of escape. He checked under the bed for any bullets or health drinks before throwing caution into the wind and jumping down the second hole.

He completely missed the floor. Johnny fell straight through the first floor’s hole, desperately trying to grab the concrete to pull himself back up. It was no use, he fell further and further away from the hole and could feel gravity pull him closer to the Earth.  
“ _It’s over!”_ He thought, panic rising in his stomach. Any second now he’d hit the cold floor and every bone in his body would break. Johnny closed his eyes and braced for impact.  
He hit something all right, it just wasn’t the painful, hard ground he was expecting. What he landed on was large and somewhat soft and it had collapsed under his weight, giving Johnny a comfortable landing. Getting himself up, Johnny inspected the thing he landed on and he just about had a heart attack. He landed on the two-headed creature. It groaned and tried to pick itself back up but Johnny put an end to that plan when he bashed it twice on the head with his pipe.  
“Uhn-uhn.” He shook his head. “But thank you for the landing!”  
The room he was in was larger than the previous rooms and there were old showers scattered across the walls, though most had succumbed to limescale and other dirt. Landing on the monster had also protected Johnny from the damp flooring and the water splashed at his ankles as he opened the rusty double doors. The double doors led to another corridor, with another set of double doors directly opposite the one he just left and as expected, they were locked. At the end of the corridor was another red ladder and deciding he had nothing to lose, Johnny decided to investigate.

The ladder was tall and led back up to the third floor and passed through both the first and second floors. The air was less dense and there was more light, highlighted by the white walls and flooring that the rest of the building lacked. The first floor was a little circular room had nothing of importance apart from a document that Johnny tucked in his pocket and wanted to read on the top floor. The second and third floors followed the same architectural structure as the first but also featured a rotating handle and Johnny was unsure of its use. After a minute of deduction, he decided he’d turn the third floor handle to the right since it was the direction he used to open the sluice gates. The wheel handle squeaked as Johnny turned it and he somewhere in the building he could hear a door creaking open. Johnny wondered if it was the man locked in the cell. Remembering the document in his back pocket, Johnny pulled it out and read it whilst leaning on the uncomfortable handle.

_Chief, if you turn the handle in the_   
_middle of this room, you can easily_   
_rotate the cells. You can't rotate the 1 st_   
_floor, so align the 2nd and 3rd floors_   
_with the 1st floor cell that has the_   
_blood-stained bed._

_By the way, if you use the peephole in_   
_this room, it's easy to make sure you're_   
_doing it right. Give it a try._   
_Also, please don't forget to open the_   
_sluice gate on the roof._   
_Much appreciated, Chief!_

“ _Oh boy,”_ thought Johnny, the author and everyone else who had to suffer through this Godforsaken puzzle. “ _This is going to be hard.”_  
After about an hour and a half of rotating the handles on either floor and cursing at failed attempts to align the bloodied beds after viewing his efforts through the bedroom windows, Johnny finally aligned the three floors and descended back down the ladder and into the main lobby.  
The stick monsters were now surrounding the ladder he had just climbed down from and blocked his way to the end of the corridor. After successfully bashing each large head blocking his exit, Johnny then stopped half way down the corridor when he saw the man who was locked in the cell talking to the same little boy from the forest world.  
The man was kneeling in front of the boy, the back of his blue shirt facing Johnny and was whispering franticly as though to himself and not the boy. His mumblings continued and his pitch became more and more strained, more pained in pronunciation and eventually the little boy walked away, expressionless. Johnny moved closer to the man when the boy left the room, placing his hand on the man’s shoulder.  
“Oh hai again!”  
The man jumped and turned to face Johnny, trembling.  
“Who is that boy?” Johnny asked, trying to pull the man to his feet, which proved tough since the man was fairly heavy.  
The man used Johnny to pull himself up. “His name’s Walter, Walter Sullivan. I used to work at the orphanage, watching the kids. I’m Andrew DeSalvo.”  
“It is nice to meet you, Andrew!” Johnny said cheerfully, thumbs tucked into his Levi’s.  
“They tried to make it seem like an orphanage,” Andrew continued, his eyes bordering on frenzied. “But according to that town’s Holy Scriptures, it was actually the centre of their religion.”  
He took a step back, clutching his head. “That kid, Walter. He was really into that mumbo-jumbo.” He turned away from Johnny and stumbled towards the door. “My God, my God…”  
“Okay.” Johnny said whilst waving. “Bye!”  
Johnny paused, remembering what he had to do.  
“Get to third floor and jump through the hole. Sounds easy!”

-

Before he jumped through any more holes, Johnny had travelled back to his apartment in the hope of recovering some of his stamina lost from the beatings from the wall men. He awoke in his bed as usual, though something didn’t seem right. From the living room he could hear the faint noise of static buzzing through the walls and Johnny quickly shot up out of bed to investigate. His TV was on. He pressed the remote to turn it off but the static continued, the grey flickering of the television unnerved Johnny since it wasn’t on when he left. He pulled out the TV plug and his heart sank. The static was still on the screen. The TV hadn’t cut to the black nothingness when the electricity was cut and the noise got louder as though mocking Johnny’s efforts. He backed off from the demonic TV and decided to check on his front door. To his surprise (or dismay), there was red another letter under his door.

_Lately I've been feeling like_   
_my life is in serious danger._   
_I've been through a lot in my life,_   
_but I've never felt this kind of pure,_   
_animal fear._

_In case something happens to me, I've_   
_decided to write down what I've learned_   
_for whoever you are that's living in the_   
_apartment now._

_I've been investigating the mass murder_   
_that took place 7 years ago in which 10_   
_people were killed in 10 ten days._   
_They were killed in a variety of ways,_   
_but the one thing they had in common_   
_was that each corpse had the following_   
_numbers, in order of their deaths,_   
_carved into them:_

_01121, 02121, 03121,_   
_04121, 05121, 06121,_   
_07121, 08121, 09121,_   
_10121 ... The name of their killer..._   
_it was carved in as well..._

_His name was...Walter Sullivan._

Johnny dropped the letter and clamped his hand over his mouth. Walter Sullivan. That was the little boy. That little boy was the murderer.  
“ _No, that can not be right.”_ The little boy was about five, the murders took place seven years ago and it didn’t add up. Had he travelled back in time? Was he going to watch this little boy become a killer? No, that didn’t make sense either. Jasper saw the little boy and he burned himself alive. He wasn’t travelling to the past, he was travelling into a different dimension. He was wasting time. No longer needing recovery, Johnny climbed back into the hole and returned to the water prison world, a new feeling of dread washing over him. He needed to get to the third floor. If he focused on a goal, he’d survive.

-

After passing through three floors, Johnny had landed in what looked like a dining room. The kitchen appliances had long succumbed to mould and other fungi and the tabled were black with wood rot but the decaying food gave indication that this was the prison’s dining hall. A couple of stick monsters clung to the mould in the corner of the room but Johnny chose to ignore them and turned his attention to the double doors leading out of the kitchen. The doors were locked and protected with a keypad, illuminated by the fluorescent light above him. He didn’t know the combination but something deep inside of him told him he knew. Slowly, he entered 0302 and the door’s lock clicked open. On one of the doors, an orange placard was placed into a square depression and it depicted an eye.  
_Watchfullness  
_ Johnny knew what to expect when he opened the door.

There was a metal pier soaked in blood, standing underneath various blades and saws all covered in the same thick, red blood and dripping into the filthy water below. Johnny crossed the pier and stood at the circular pillar at the end. Lying dead in the water, with blood seeping out of his stomach was Andrew. The numbers 18121 were carved into his stomach using one of the knives above him and reddening water poured in and out of his mouth as he sunk and remerged from the water, eyes glazed over and fingers spread.  
The last thing Johnny recalled before waking up in his bed was the slow, steady drip of droplets into the bloody water below.


	10. Chapter 10

Johnny could still hear the dripping as he stood up, the steady sound of water falling onto a lifeless body. It was unbearable. The violent carving of the numbers onto Andrew’s chest was done with such ferocity that Johnny wouldn’t have been surprised if muscle had been torn. And the _smell._ The stench of iron and mould mixed with dirt from the filthy water was enough to make Johnny heave and even in the comfort of his bedroom, he was almost certain he could still smell it. He walked into his living room and threw the new placard into his storage box. He was fed up. Fed up with watching people die and fed up with the constant fear of being brutally murdered by a hideous monster. Johnny voiced his frustrations.  
“I fed up with this world!” He moaned to nobody.

Out of morbid curiosity, Johnny decided to investigate on Eileen. He had forgotten that there was a hole in his living room wall and decided that it would be best to make sure she was still safe. Eileen was on her bed again, laughing at some TV show. Johnny could hear the show, feel the vibrations through the wall and yet, his own apartment was silenced to those around him. If this Walter Sullivan was the one locking him in his own apartment, he had enough humour to torment Johnny further and let him listen in on the life around him, even if he couldn’t.   
And Johnny thought Lisa was bad.  
Looking up from the hole, Johnny noticed that nobody had placed anymore red papers under his door and he took it as a sign that he had nothing else to do except crawl back in the hole and endure another trip to some Godforsaken world. Armed with his pistol and trusty pipe, he braced himself for the next visit.

Blood. Thick, crimson blood was splattered all over his bath and up his bathroom wall. The blood clung to his shower curtain and slowly rolled down his tiled wall. He only cleaned it last week.   
“Oh man!” Johnny shook his dark, tangled mane at the mess in his bathroom. He made a mental note to clean it later, presumably at a time where he wasn’t being cooped up in his own apartment and fearing for his life. Once more, Johnny climbed into the widened hole and wriggled through until he felt the force push him through the boundaries of reality.   
This time, Johnny awoke on concrete, lying on his back and facing up to the night sky. Large grey cermet walls dwarfed him on either side and noisy ventilation ran alongside these walls.   
“Am I out?” Johnny inspected his surroundings, he was almost certain he recognised the buildings. In the distance, he could hear what sounded like monkeys screeching and howling. Weird. What was even weirder is that he could also hear gunshots and this made Johnny’s mouth become very dry. He didn’t want to fight monkey monsters armed with guns.

He had woken up in a linear alley, with a dead end and a hole behind him, giving him little choice but to move forward towards the screeching of the monkeys which was increasing in pitch and volume. He hoped they didn’t have assault rifles. The alley way opened up into a parking lot, with a solitary green car parked next to a fenced off area. What struck Johnny as particularly odd was the staircase opposite a building next to the alley. There was no way for a car to park up here. If the theory that these worlds were created by Walter Sullivan was correct, it was strange that Walter would go to the effort to place cars on a roof with no way of putting them there. Did Walter do this intentionally? Was there a deeper meaning behind? Maybe Peter could answer these questions for him one day. Johnny walked down the staircase, leaving behind his inner confused thoughts. He had not been on the floor for a second when he felt something land heavy next to him, resulting in a loud thud.  
The creature was made of pink muscle as though a monkey had been flayed and a second blind, deformed head protruded from its chest and swayed pathetically as the creature waddled closer to Johnny. He knew what to do. The curve of the pipe landed in the creature’s head and Johnny could feel the impact as it’s skull shattered in the pipe’s landing. Johnny did not want to take chances and he swung his pipe into the creature’s abdomen and it stumbled backwards into the door of the building behind it. A simple gunshot to the head finished it off.

Johnny walked down the second staircase next to the monkey’s corpse, hoping to find a clue as to where he was going. This roof floor was larger than the others and more cars were inexplicably there too, accompanied by a glowing red sign on the front of the roof.   
_HOTEL SOUTH ASHFIELD_  
“Huh?” Johnny was perplexed. He was in Ashfield again, an Ashfield altered in a different reality and it was almost frightening to think that right now he was on top of the hotel but invisible to those in the real world. He was definitely going to need to speak to Peter after this. There was a door leading to what Johnny assumed was the rest of the hotel and before he could pull it open, he heard the shouts of someone getting closer and closer.  
“Ouch! Dammit…” A man had just fallen out of the sky. It was so bizarre that even Johnny had to do a double-take. A middle-aged man had fell at least three stories, landed on his arm and didn’t even seem fazed. He didn’t even look hurt.   
“Where the Hell am I?” The man was holding a silver revolver in his right hand and he hoisted himself up with the free hand. Johnny moved in to help him, but was greeted with the barrel of the revolver and put his hands up to show he was unarmed. The man relented.   
“Ah, you’re a real person.” He said as he finally got to his feet and he cocked his head. “Hey, you’re the guy who lives across from me!”   
Johnny gave a toothy grin. “Ah-ha! Yes, I am Johnny.” His hand was extended for a handshake but declined by a dignified turn of the head from the man.  
“I’m Richard Braintree, from 207.” The man moved his eyes over South Ashfield. “What the Hell’s happened to us? That hole…and this freaky world.”  
Johnny nodded. “Yes, it is very strange.”   
The man looked back at Johnny. “But if you’re here too,” He pointed a finger at Johnny. “Then there must be something wrong with the whole apartment building.”  
Richard paused and his eyes widened. “That must explain what happened to that other guy too…” He said this softly so that it was barely above a whisper.  
“Who?”   
“The guy who lived in 302 before you. A journalist, he disappeared one day. He got pretty crazy towards the end, shut himself up in his room and wouldn’t come out.” Richard shrugged. “Anyway, I’m getting’ the Hell out of here.” He walked towards the door and turned back to Johnny. “You should too, if you know what’s good for you.” Richard opened the door but stopped as Johnny interjected.   
“Oh! Keep in mind, Richard that there is an evil kid lurking around so you should be careful.” Richard scoffed in response and left Johnny on the rooftop. Johnny had a sinking feeling that he’d meet Richard again, most likely with numbers carved into him. Regardless, Johnny followed him through the door.

Richard had already gone. The hallway Johnny was standing in was more reminiscent of a regular apartment hallway more so than a hotel’s one. The hallway led to a dimly lit kitchen, with a circular wooden table holding champagne, birthday cake and streamers which had fallen from the ceiling. Choking and gurgling echoed from behind the table and on the floor, was a pale man with a sword stuck in his stomach. Johnny edged further and saw that the man was actually similar to the ghosts that plagued him in the subway world and forest world. He had a key in his hand and Johnny wrestled it from him, falling into bookshelf on the wall.  
“Stupid ghost!” Johnny shouted as he looked at the key in his hand. It simply read _house_ so Johnny placed it in the door where the ghost lay and opened it, leaving the ghost stuck to the floor by the sword. The door opened to several metal staircases which led to a foyer on the bottom floor. As Johnny walked down the first staircase, a slight headache and loud groaning convinced him to pick up the pace and sprint to the foyer and he bolted through the door on the far wall. He was now in a dark alleyway, completely sealed in by grey brick, save for a door on the wall facing him. Johnny briefly wondered how many doors he had passed through since being trapped in his apartment before eventually twisting the door’s handle and walking through. The next room appeared to be a storage room, given the shelving strewn across the room and leaning on the walls. The shelves housed nothing of interest except a pack of ammunition amid some rotting carcases of small animals. Wiping the grime off the bullets, Johnny then placed them into his pocket and continued his adventures through the next door.

He knew this place. This was the sporting goods shop, Johnny had been here enough times to purchase footballs to recall the shape of the store, though now it seemed to have changed its appearance slightly. The floor was covered in a layer of dust as if nobody had cleaned the shop in years and most of the display racks had vanished, leaving behind scattered sporting equipment such as volleyballs, golf clubs and a baseball bat. Johnny inspected the baseball bat, it was heavier than the pipe though a lot shorter. He gave it a test swing and decided that based on its force, it would be a better weapon than the pipe. He placed the steel pipe behind a cage containing volleyballs just in case he needed it later and to hide it from the monkey demons. On one of the walls was another red hole but Johnny advised himself against it since he didn’t really have anything to recover. He tried the door next to the shop’s counter but was discovered that it had been locked, presumably by the owner. He instead twisted the knob of the final door on the adjacent wall and it pushed open, leading to an emergency staircase, similar to the one he had just passed, complete with the same blood coloured walls and rusty metal. From the top of the stairs he could hear a distorted mechanical grinding so he readied his bat and slowly tiptoed down the stairs. He lost all sense of caution when he began to hear growling and he scrambled to the door at the bottom.

“Yuck! What is that smell?”   
The room was dimly lit and smelled horrible, a foul mixture of animal food and faeces, similar to Denny’s dorm room. Johnny took two steps further until a dog monster emerged from around the corner with its red tongue dragging behind it. It sniffed the ground and growled in Johnny’s direction, arching it’s back and preparing an attack. Johnny placed his second hand on the bat, bent his knees and waited. The dog flew three foot in the air, claws aimed for Johnny’s face before it was wacked in the jaw with the bat. The dog’s body flung against the wall, slid to the floor and lay dead in its own blood. Johnny continued into the room and faced rows of shelving displaying various types of cat and dog food. Putting two and two together, Johnny stated that he was now in a pet shop in South Ashfield, one that he didn’t know the name of. Walking closer to the counter, Johnny noticed a glint of metal sticking out amidst a few bags of cat food. He pushed the bags out of the way and discovered a silver key with a black tag attached to it.   
“Albert’s Sports.” Johnny squinted at the small writing on the tag and concluded that it unlocked the door back in the sporting goods shop. He ran back to the door he came from, partly as an excuse not to run into any more evil animals and ran back up the flights of stairs in a comical manor, with his knees nearly hitting his chest in his bid to run faster.

Panting, he pushed open the store door once more before clutching his chest and resting on the counter. He could feel a slight headache coming on and realised that he had been running around from world to world for what could have been a whole day. He was starting to feel the exhaustion now. He felt a smart idea coming on.   
“I’m going to take a nap!”   
Johnny pushed the key deep into his trouser pocket, next to some bullets and God knows what else and climbed back into the hole dug into the shop’s wall. As he shuffled in deeper and deeper, Johnny firmly believed that taking a nap was possibly the smartest idea he had come up with all day.


	11. Chapter 11

It wasn’t until he was propelled through the tunnel that Johnny realised that a nap was a completely redundant idea. He awoke on his bed for what felt like the hundredth time, head spinning and eyes slowly adjusting to the bedroom surrounding him. He felt somewhat refreshed, about as refreshed as one could after fighting monsters on a diet of health drinks and chocolate. Squeezing the bridge of his nose, Johnny pulled himself up from his bed and stumbled towards his bedroom door. He was never truly going to adjust to this interdimensional mode of transport but he was determined to try and cope with it for the time being.  
“Uhhh…what’s that?” There was a soft tapping at the front door, light and rhythmic. Johnny’s mind raced and he thought of Eileen, hoping that she had realised that he was in trouble and was coming to check on him.  
“I’m coming Eilee-een!” He ran to the front door, nearly tripping on a pair of underwear he had thrown in the hallway a couple of days ago. After untangling himself from said underwear, Johnny threw himself against the door, banging at it several times before finally looking through the peephole.

Eileen wasn’t there. A message was.  
_BETTER CHECK ON YOUR NEIGHBOUR SOON!_  
Johnny felt his blood freeze within his veins and the dizziness from before began to stir in his mind. He backed away from the door, fear pumping through his body. If Walter was the person leaving bloody handprints, he must know that Johnny had found a way to escape the room and even worse, he was planning to use Eileen as a horrific part of his plan. Johnny knocked over his stool and several spoons as he crouched by the hole in the wall. He couldn’t bare it if she was hurt, she was a nice person even if she did hate his extensive collection of cheesy R &B music.  
Eileen was sitting on her bed again, legs crossed and leaning forward as she watched TV. She gasped and clutched her heart and Johnny nearly had a heart attack himself until she giggled. She was watching some horror film, Johnny could have laughed at how ironic it was but he didn’t fully understand irony so he didn’t. However, he did understand one thing; he had to go back into the hole.

-

It was almost a relief when Johnny returned to the Albert’s Sporting Goods. Although he was in an evil otherworld filled with monstrosities, it put some distance between him and Walter who was now roaming the apartment hallways. It was just Johnny’s luck that he’d be stalked by a serial killer, Lisa would probably be laughing if she knew of the whole situation. Johnny pondered what Lisa’s placard would be if Walter had murdered her as he shoved the key he retrieved into the door lock. He decided that Lisa’s placard would be _Tramp_ and would depict a red dress. Johnny was now standing on more metal grating which was accompanied by yet another staircase. Screaming and hollering also informed Johnny that there were more monkey monsters waiting for him on the stairs.  
“Go on…” Johnny beckoned the monkeys up and one took the bait. Swaggering up the stairs with its second head bobbing along, a monkey finally squared up to Johnny and was swiftly hit in the face with the bat for its troubles. The monkey screeched in pain and staggered into the railing. A second whack sent it toppling over.

Johnny hurried down the stairs, dodging attacks from the monkeys who were trying to group up on him from the back. Two more fell from the building and Johnny sprinted around the corner of the building, since enemies tended not to follow him when he entered a new area which was lucky. The corner led to a narrow walkway which was unbarricaded and revealed a large drop to the side, a drop that would kill Johnny and perhaps bruise Richard. Two elevators were attached to the building and one had stopped on another floor. Johnny pressed the button for the remaining one and walked inside. As he mentally argued with himself over which floor to investigate, the sounds of a man talking came closer and closer. The elevator jolted and slowly began to travel downwards, metal cogs screaming as they rubbed against the pulleys. As Johnny travelled South, he passed Richard in the opposite elevator, talking to someone and waving his pistol. As the elevator stopped, Johnny realised he was talking to the kid, who was cowering in fear.  
“Are you the kid he was talkin' about? You live in that apartment too, huh?” Richard took a step closer to the child who was frozen in fear. “Say,” Richard poked the child with his revolver and he shuffled backwards, covering his stomach. “You look a lot like a little punk that I once caught sneakin' around there.” Richard waved his pistol once more before focusing it on the kid’s stomach.  
“Do you know somethin' about what's goin' on?”  
“Oh hai, Richard!” Johnny called through the elevator and both Richard and the child turned in surprise.  
“Piss off, Johnny!” The sound of the elevator doors opening drowned out Richard’s swear and the little boy bolted it out, his footsteps echoing on the metal flooring. The echoes caught Richard’s attention and he called after the boy.  
“HEY! Hey, you! Stop!” Richard ran after the boy and doors closed once more, leaving Johnny alone in the other elevator.

The doors opposite Johnny had also opened and revealed a ladder heading down. Shrugging, Johnny placed his foot on the green ladder and started to climb down. He lost his footing and stumbled, landing on his back and groaning in pain. The floor was wet and water seeped into his shirt and for a brief second Johnny thought he had landed back into the water prison world. The flooring was tiled, similar to his own flooring in his bathroom and there were broken pipes protruding from half-constructed walls. From the looks of things, Johnny had landed in an old gym washroom though it was totally derelict now. Rolling over and getting his knees wet in the process, Johnny got to his feet and began to explore. A second ladder opposite the one he fell from led to the other elevator which was on another floor. When he returned to the wet room Johnny searched for another exit. Water dripped from cracks in the tiles and the whole place reeked of mould but down a short corridor stood another ladder. As Johnny edged closer to it, a gang of stick monsters grew between the cracked tiles, guarding the ladder and sealing Johnny off.  
“Augh!” Johnny grunted as he swung his bat, decapitating two of the monsters and killing another three. With his path cleared, he made his way up the ladder.

At the top of the ladder was a fluorescent light and as Johnny pulled himself out of the hole, he found himself back on the streets of Ashfield. Passing walkways and corridors crammed with monkey monsters that he really did not want to fight, Johnny found a door leading to (you guessed it) another staircase. The walls were crimson red, splashed a darker shade in certain places and white moulding bled into the crimson, creating a nauseating experience.  The stairs led to an open foyer and then to another emergency staircase, barricaded to one side with metal fencing. The dull echo of Johnny’s boots against the steel provided a creepy sound as he made his way further down the staircase. To his side were bags of trash, all foul smelling and leaking dark fluid. He didn’t want to investigate so he opened the door at the very end, hoping for some reprieve.

And reprieve he got. He had walked into Bar Southfield, though it was completely empty and most of the tables and stools had been removed. The wallpaper had been taken down also, leaving the brickwork of the bar exposed and some had been chipped. The neon blue lights hanging over the bar also unsettled Johnny as the bar appeared darker and more sinister, partly due to the rusty axe lying on a table as well.  
“Oooh!” Johnny picked up the axe and gave it a test swing. It was a lot faster than the bat and had the same strength. There was no competition on which one he was keeping. Johnny stood behind the bar, searching for a bottle of lemonade or cola to drink when he came across a quickly written note on top of the counter. The exit was locked.  
_The boss said that the number this time is the last 4 digits of this store's phone number._  
_But the phone number is written right there on the sign on the roof._  
 _Anybody could see it from South Ashfield Street. Is that really okay?_  
In the back of Johnny’s mind he could recall a billboard outside his apartment window, it was a display for the very bar he was standing in. Realisation dawning upon Johnny, he noticed a hole behind the pool table in the centre of the bar and he wasted no time in getting back to his room and getting the combination.

-

“Thirty-seven fifty. Thirty-seven fifty.” Johnny repeated this over and over as he came to by the foot of the hole. Now travelling lighter after he placed the baseball bat back into the storage box, Johnny continued murmuring the code combination over and over as he punched it into the keypad.  
As soon as he opened the door, a cold gust of wind hit Johnny in the face and caused him to shudder. The door had opened up to a large stairwell and the temperature had dropped substantially and Johnny clutched himself to retain heat. At the very top of the stairwell, stories above Johnny’s head a painful scream echoed through the brick walls and rebounded landed in Johnny’s ears. His heart pumped faster and without realising it, he began to run closer to the source of the screaming. Scrambling up the stairs, Johnny’s head began to pound and his vision became hazier and behind him, groans became louder and more strained. Three ghosts were closing in on him, their black sludge trailing after them and sticking to various walls. Legs aching and pain threatening to overtake him, Johnny continued to climb the stairs though each flight became harder to muster.  
“ **YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, GHOSTS**!” Johnny shouted at the ghosts, confusing them for just long enough for him to create distance. At the very top of the staircase, Johnny threw himself against the wall to recover his stamina and there he noticed the final door.  
It was identical to the ones in the apartment, even down to the number 207 engraved on the door. Underneath the number was a fourth placard, purple in colour.  
_Chaos._

More screams echoed on the other side of the door and hesitantly, Johnny pushed it open.   
The room was hauntingly familiar, the chequered tiles and blue tinged furniture forming somewhere in the back of Johnny's mind. In the armchair in front of him, a figure stammered out shouts.  
Richard twitched where he sat, blue sparks of electricity flickering off his blackening skin and his pale eyes rolled back to his brain. Blood poured from his nose, the exact same colour as the blood dripping from his forehead.  
_19121_  
“Are you okay, Richard?” Johnny called over the sound of frying skin, keeping his distance from the chair. Beside Richard stood the child from earlier, ignoring the cries of Richard and pointing out the window. In the darkness of the night sky Johnny could see lights from the building opposite, large squares of yellow fluorescence. A slim shadow passed one of the windows and something clicked in Johnny's brain, The boy was staring at South Ashfield Heights. Johnny was in Richard's apartment.  
Richard’s body continued to jolt as he fought against the metal restraints keeping him bound.  
“K-K-K-K-Kid?” He stuttered, fighting the electricity running through him. “Th-Th-Th-That’s n-no kid!” The boy continued to point at the window.  
“It’s t-t-t-t-the 11121 m-m-man!” Richard exhaled and flopped forward, his feet twitching from the static and blood dripping onto his lap. The electricity subsided and Richard was still, dead.

The room spun around, faster than ever and as Johnny fell to the floor with his vision greying, words in deep scarlet flashed in his mind.  
_BETTER CHECK ON YOUR NEIGHBOUR SOON!_


	12. Chapter 12

Johnny awoke to nothing. With the whirling grey of the unconscious behind him, Johnny realised how silent his room was. There was no static buzz from the television, no faint ticking of the clock from the living room. Even the casual traffic from outside his apartment had disappeared given the lack noise he heard from outside his window. It appeared as though Walter had finally gotten round to soundproofing his entire apartment.    
Lying on the bed, Johnny cringed at how clammy he felt. His shirt clung to his back by a layer of perspiration and his hair felt greasier than usual. Any hopes of a shower were quickly dashed after he remembered that the shower in his bathroom was now filled with blood.     
“Haughhhh-augh!” He moaned, rolling around the bed in frustration. “Why must you do this to me, Walter?”   
He clutched the bedsheets in anger, writhing around with them for a few moments before finally stopping and coming back into reality. He’d saw Richard die, cooked in his own apartment and the creeping shadow of death was making it’s way closer and closer to Johnny’s apartment.    
_ Eileen. _

The bloody warning flashed in Johnny’s mind. The silence was destroyed by Johnny’s grunts as he scrambled out of bed and threw himself out of his bedroom door, completely forgetting about the new placard. His body slumped against the corridor walls as he ran to the hole next to his chest of drawers. Panting and out of breath, Johnny crouched by the hole and looked through, peering into Eileen’s bedroom.    
She was alive. Eileen was sitting on her bed, absent-mindedly watching television with wet hair, clearly fresh from a shower. Johnny sighed, body weak from relief.   
“Oh wow, I am so happy that Eileen is safe.” Johnny said with as much emotion as he could muster. Slowly removing himself from the floor, Johnny inspected his surroundings. The living room seemed to be in order, as was the kitchen and no scraps of paper had been pushed under his door. Johnny let out another prolonged groan.   
“I have to go back in that hole? For serious?”

“...it’s bullshit.” Johnny grumbled to himself as he opened the bathroom door. His nose crinkled at the congealed blood in the grouting of his bathroom tiles, he’d be scrubbing for hours to get it all out. Once again, the hole had increased in diameter and had now destroyed the entirety of his bathroom wall and chipped away at some of his sink. A few bottles of black hair dye lay on the floor and Johnny hastily placed them in the medicine cabinet behind him. Walter didn’t need to know his hair wasn’t naturally jet black.    
Still armed with his rusty axe and pistol, Johnny wriggled into the hole for what felt like the millionth time and allowed himself to be propelled into the unknown.

-

_ Clank. _ Johnny twitched but did not wake.  _ Clank. _ There is was again.  _ Clank. _ Johnny opened his eyes but his vision was obscured by sleepy haze.  _ Clank. _ A large figure was in front of Johnny, slowly making his way down a corridor. No, not just any corridor, the apartment corridor. The linoleum had disintegrated, exposing the similar metal grating from the subway world. There was no wallpaper, just red slime, similar to the flesh of a flayed person. Johnny wanted to move but his tired body disobeyed and he continued to lie, rather uncomfortably, on the metal floor.  _ Clank. _ The figure stopped outside a door, turning to face it. He lifted up his arm and gave three knocks against the door, each one louder than the previous. He continued to stand outside the door for a second when he finished before walking down the remainder of the corridor and entering the stairwell. Johnny took this as his cue to get up off the floor. Now fully alert, Johnny took in the new environment. It was definitely the corridor outside his apartment. A small area outside 302 seemed to remain in its normal appearance complete with white wallpaper and faded lino. Johnny’s heart sank. The man knocked on Eileen’s door.    
Room 302 was locked in and Eileen did not respond to the stranger’s knocking, so Johnny headed in the direction of 301, the apartment owned by a man whom Johnny did not know. 

The door was unlocked, thankfully and opened up to a room in a similar layout to Johnny’s own apartment. Johnny did not know the man who owned the apartment, but he knew that it had obviously shifted from its true appearance, given the lack of decoration and the bareness of it all. The walls were a muddy brown, the tiled kitchen stained and filthy with tabletops covered in dust and grime. On the dining table in the centre of the room was an open diary with the name ‘Mike’ scribbled into it and Johnny (who knew next to nothing on privacy) began to flick through it.    
“Blah...blah...porn...stalking...stolen clothes…” Johnny shook his head and closed the diary. Mike sounded an awful lot like Denny and Johnny considered inviting him over for a pesto pizza once the whole situation blew over. In the corner of his eye, Johnny noticed a red piece of paper adjacent to the diary. There was nothing written on it but the colour was so intense compared to the room that Johnny assumed it was of importance and placed it in his pocket.    
“I’ll put it under my door on the way out.” He told himself as he walked down the hallway into Mike’s bedroom. The bedroom was filled with pornography magazines. They were stacked and stored in various placed; under the bed, on the bed, on the surfaces. A few posters were pinned up on the walls also, two of which were the same colour as the paper Johnny picked up. The first was on the wall closest to the door and depicted a man with greying blonde hair looking away from the photographer.    
“Oh hai, Frank!” Johnny exclaimed when he realised the identity of the man. Frank looked a lot younger and less weathered, there was even a smile on his face. Through the thin photo paper, there was a shape outlined and Johnny tore the poster off to investigate. It was a key for 105, Frank’s room.    
“That must be where the other keys are…”

The second poster was of a dark haired woman in a nurse uniform. In the same scribble were the words ‘I love you’. Johnny frowned, this guy was admittedly weirder than Denny. Underneath this poster was a smaller key for locker 106 and Johnny pocketed it and moved out of the room. The atmosphere in the room seemed heavier now and Johnny could feel a headache emerging as he walked into the living room.   
“Wuhh…” It was the same ghost that plagued Johnny and Cynthia on the subway, still wearing her floral jumper and violet hat. Johnny got out of the apartment as quickly as he could and slammed the door behind him. The final door on the third floor was 304. Johnny turned the knob a couple of times but the door remained locked so he made his way to the stairwell in hopes of retrieving Frank’s ring of keys. Johnny stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the figure from earlier sitting on the staircase leading to the second floor. Johnny had barely made out his details but the man was wearing a heavy blue coat and had long, disheveled blonde hair, not too unsimilar to Johnny himself. He decided to introduce himself.    
“Oh hai there!”    
The man turned to face Johnny, an eerie smile on his unshaven face. He picked up a small doll next to him and presented it to Johnny.    
“I got this from Miss Galvin, a long, long time ago. She was younger than me back then-”   
“A-ha-ha-ha! Well, that’s a very interesting story, strange man!” Johnny sat next to the stranger, who seemed to be bewildered.    
“Wait,” The man began. “My story is not finished.”   
Johnny ignored him. “I have a story. I tell you how I met Lisa. I was working as a busboy in a hotel, and uh, uh, she was sitting, drinking her coffee, and she was so beautiful, and I say hi to her. That’s how we met.”    
The man blinked and gave a look of pure confusion. “What?”    
Johnny took this as an opportunity to continue his story. “The interesting part is that on our first date, she paid for dinner. Anyway, what’s new with you?”    
The man shook his head. “I was going to tell you the importance of this doll but you inter-”    
“Strange man, don’t plan too much. It may not come out right.” Johnny had cut him off yet again and he thumped him hard on the back. The man nearly lost his balance on the staircase but managed to catch himself before he fell.    
“Nice to see you, strange man. I’m going to get some keys.” Johnny got up from the staircase and descended, putting more distance between him and the man. When Johnny was out of earshot, the man placed his head in his hands.    
“What the Hell?”


	13. Chapter 13

The first floor lobby was the largest part of South Ashfield heights. In the real world it was nicely decorated with oak flooring and cream coloured wallpaper. A few navy sofas were placed alongside the walls and hanging plant pots and paintings adorned various parts of the room. In the otherworld, it was totally different. The oak flooring was stained red with blood and in parts was completely gone, replaced with the metal grating. The art deco motif in the centre of the floor was still there but was faded, the blue tinged an off-grey and covered in dried blood. The new walls were identical to the ones on the third floor and the smell of death was overwhelming as four dead dog monsters lay motionless on the floor, pus oozing out of their bullet-ridden bodies.   
“Uhh…” Johnny placed his hand over his nose. The room smelled even worse than his bathroom and he attributed it to the yellow pus leaking out of the dogs. Tiptoeing past the dead monsters, Johnny skirted along the staircase and to the lockers installed on the side of it. The lockers glowed from a dirty lamp on the table next to them and the flecks of filth and blood were even more prominent. Johnny could just make out the number 106 on one of the lockers on the bottom row and he placed the key inside the lock. He opened the locker and was then bombarded with an assortment of letters, all addressed to a woman called Rachael in pink scribble.   
“A-ha-ha-ha!” Johnny laughed as he read the letters which were becoming creepier and more detailed. “Love is blind!”   
Nothing else was in the locker so Johnny closed it and carried on walking to the double doors on the right wall, where Frank’s room was.

Frank’s room was the first room in the corridor. A small sign reading ‘Superintendent's Room’ was next to it, though the writing appeared smudged. Johnny rummaged for the key in his pocket before pulling it out and opening the door. It was peculiar, the doors looked normal in comparison to the rest of the surroundings, still off-white and relatively clean. It was odd, but Johnny pushed this thought to the back of his head and entered Frank’s apartment.   
The apartment wasn’t in its real world form but it looked safer than the nightmare outside in the main corridors. Frank’s kitchen had been gated off and the walls succumbed to some sort of mould but other than that, the apartment looked fine. Frank had a collection of security monitors by his kitchen but all four screens displayed nothing, a stark contrast to the violent red of the paper next to them. Again, the paper spoke of nothing but Johnny kept them anyway. Beside the papers were the keys to the apartment and Johnny picked them up, looking at the different numbers.   
“Huh?” Johnny recounted the keys, hoping he was just bad at maths. He was awful at counting but this time he was correct. “There is no key for Eileen’s room!”   
Johnny noticed that there was a door open at the end of Frank’s hallway. “I’ll go look in his bedroom!”   
Johnny got halfway to the hallway entrance but then recoiled in disgust. There was a foul smell seeping out of Frank’s bookcase and it made Johnny’s eyes water. Holding his breath, he ventured closer to the bookcase and carefully lifted the lid of a small box on the bottom shelf.   
“Haughhhh-augh!” Johnny ran to the nearest wall and dry heaved. There was a small piece of decayed flesh in the box. The flesh was long and thin, brown in colour and was the most disgusting thing Johnny ever had the displeasure of smelling. It made the water prison smell like roses. He left straight away, still fighting the vomit trying to escape his throat and vowing to avoid Frank at all costs once the nightmare was over.

The next room was 106, decorated in psychedelic wallpaper that seemed to emulate a bruise with it’s dark yellow and striking purple. The main living area contained nothing, so Johnny explored the bedroom which was decorated in the same wallpaper. It was a small bedroom with a little brown desk and a steel bed frame. On the name was a nurse’s uniform and a small medical kit. _Rachael._   
On Rachael’s desk was a landline phone, complete with a phone number.   
“‘My darling’s number…’” Johnny read in his monotone voice. Curious to see who it was, Johnny rang the number and immediately he could hear the ringing of a telephone somewhere within the apartment. Looks like he had some exploring to do.   
Room 107 belonged to a music enthusiast. His living room was filled with stereos and cabinets containing records and music magazines, categorised by genre.   
“Rap, Heavy Metal, Classic Rock, Jazz, Contemporary Pop…” Johnny read off the list of music labels and was devastated to find that the man did not have any records by Jarah Gibson, Johnny’s favourite artist. Johnny departed shortly after and entered the second corridor on the first floor which was opposite to the one which housed Frank’s apartment. A dog monster roamed the corridor, blindly sniffing the floor in search of food so Johnny ignored it as he entered 104. Big mistake. As soon as his boot touched the slab flooring of the apartment, six bat creatures shot out of a crack above the kitchen sink. Johnny didn’t have the time, so he closed the door and moved on.

103 was totally empty, just a stack of boxes providing support for a fluorescent light, casting Johnny in shadows and so he left after a second of double-checking the room. The dog monster was waiting for Johnny when he left the apartment and as soon as Johnny left the room, the dog lunged forward and attacked his leg, sinking its sharp teeth into Johnny’s dark jeans.  
“DOGGY!” Johnny shouted in pain, wrestling the dog to get his leg back. Johnny sunk the blade of his axe into the monster’s neck and the dog’s mouth went slack around his leg. The dog collapsed, a scrap of Johnny’s Levi jeans in his mouth.   
“Bye, doggy!” Johnny said, voice dark. He retrieved the medical kit from his pocket and bandaged up his leg, wiping away the slick blood and saliva with a medical wipe. It would suffice until he sorted it out at home. Now limping, Johnny opened up 102.   
The woman who owned 102 was an elderly woman who lived with a few cats. Johnny occasionally saw them strolling up and down the corridors and would often give them bits of Canadian bacon. As soon as he pulled the door open, Johnny was hit with the weird smell of cat urine, blood and rotting meat. Johnny identified the blood immediately, a large scarlet puddle being feasted on by fat, purple leeches in the kitchen area. With a lack of self-control, Johnny stomped on them, relishing the soft squelch they made. The blood splashed up the walls of the kitchen and along the refrigerator. Curious, Johnny pulled it open.   
“Wha?” The woman had a pair of bloody jeans in her fridge, concealing what looked like rotting meat. No, it was a carcass of a dead cat. Johnny cringed but noticed another piece of red paper next to the dead animal and pulled it out. It was half soaked in blood but Johnny placed it in his back pocket regardless. He needed to change his jeans when he returned home.   
Room 101 was the biggest disappointment thus far. Walls of guns, Uzis, bolt-action rifles and shotguns displayed everywhere and yet when Johnny attempted to use one against a particularly aggressive ghost in that room, he found out they were models. He’d never ran out of a room quite so fast in his life.

-

Johnny eventually found himself on the left corridor on the second floor after investigating rooms 205 and 206. They had nothing of use in the rooms, no bullets, no medical kits nor any red pieces of paper. Johnny finally stood outside 207 at the end of the hallway and had a sick feeling of dejavu, though he couldn’t place where he saw it last. However, it all flooded back to him once he opened the door. It was Richard Braintree’s apartment.   
“Oh hai, Richard!” Johnny called out, before realising that barely two hours ago he saw Richard Braintree fry in an electric chair. “Oh yeah…” Johnny remembered as he paced around the room. There was bloody underwear in Richard’s bin, soaked right through and it made Johnny somewhat uneasy. He hoped that Richard had just eaten some very spicy food. The electric chair was still in the apartment and Johnny had no idea whether Richard had owned this in the real world or whether it had been placed there by Walter. However, this was not important. What _was_ important was the revolver lying on the seat. Johnny picked it up and pointed it at the window.   
“Bang, bang!” He laughed before placing it in his belt, next to his pistol. He was feeling like more of a badass hero now. Richard’s apartment had nothing else of interest apart from a rather interesting interior design (checked wallpaper and checked tiles) so Johnny left and made his way back to the stairwell.

Room 204 was empty with most of the apartment sectioned off by a large, rusty gate. Johnny recalled a large woman living there and that her apartment smelled fantastic when she cooked. She once sent Johnny up a cake in exchange for him helping her with finances. It was a pretty good cake. 203 was also useless, save for a can of bug spray lying next to a crate of beer cans. Johnny eventually decided against picking it up as his pockets were getting full. He believed the man who lived in that apartment was an alcoholic, but he wasn’t entirely certain. Johnny continued up the hallway to 202, the apartment of an artist. A telephone was on the kitchen stand and was ringing loudly so Johnny picked it up.  
“Oh hai there!” He said cheerfully, to no one.   
“Anybody there?” No reply.   
“Okay, bye.” Johnny hung up.   
Room 202 was adorned in paintings of various tenants. The man had painted Rachael, Mike, Richard Braintree, the family from 206, the elderly couple from 307 and so on. He’d even gone to the trouble of painting Johnny who was depicted lying back in a chair, arms behind his head and laughing. Johnny read the caption.   
_302_ _  
_ _Strange guy. Really into football and spoons. Tried to make me play football in the alley outside the apartment whilst in a tux. I said no._   
“It was a good game, artist man.” Johnny shrugged.

After visiting 201 and getting no important items, Johnny travelled back to the third floor with the intention of placing the red pieces of paper under his door. He still had to open up 304 anyway so he sprinted up the stairs in a hurry. Room 304 had no red papers but did have some pistol bullets so Johnny picked those up before placing the scraps of red paper under his door once he left. Room 301 had a hole, but in his bid to collect keys, Johnny had completely ignored it. It was a pity since Johnny was now halfway down the second floor staircase, panting as he got closer to the hole on the first floor. When he finally reached it, he was out of breath and sweating with barely enough energy to climb through. The suction like motion of being absorbed back to reality was a welcome relief for the exhausted Johnny.

-

The dim glow of his lamp greeted Johnny as he pulled himself out of bed, back to the slightly more normal world. The apartment was no longer silent, the mechanical clunking of his washing machine echoed throughout the entire apartment and Johnny scratched his head, wondering if he had washed any clothes prior to leaving. In the living room, five red pieces of paper stuck out from under his door but Johnny ignored them momentarily to check out his washing machine.   
Lo and behold, the damn thing has been washing blood and it was now leaking onto the storage room floor and splattered up the walls. This was Walter being petty now.   
“Why Walter? Why?” Johnny shouted to the ceiling, hoping in some bizarre turn of events that Walter would explain. He didn’t though so Johnny went to examine his notes.   
The first two explained more on the Walter Sullivan murders. Murders had occurred after Sullivan’s suicide in a murder case known as ‘Sullivan Case Round Two’ and the numbers carved into victims were not random. 01121 was actually 01/21 or one out of twenty-one. A chill rolled down Johnny’s sweaty spine and he picked up the next note.   
_  
_ _I lost the key to Eileen Galvin's room._ _  
_ _I've gotta find it and bring it back._   
Let me think... The last place I saw it was…

 _  
_ “Well, what happened?” Johnny said to himself before picking up the next note.

  
_Oh yeah, I had a really wicked headache that day and just collapsed on the bed._ _  
_ _Maybe if I look near the bed in my room -302's bedroom- I'll find it._ _  
_ _I get headaches every day now._ _  
_ _It's terrible._   
What am I going to do?

  
“Three oh two? I live there!” Johnny discarded the pieces of paper and ran back into his bedroom, nearly taking the door off it’s hinges with the amount of force he pushed it open with. Jumping over his bed and dirtying his rose-red bed sheets, Johnny dropped to the floor and looked under his bed. In the farthest corner there was a tiny doll attached to a small key. Eileen’s key. Johnny grabbed it.   
“I coming Eileen!” He shouted forgetting how to speak English.

-

This time, the hole had transported him to Mike’s room in 301. Johnny hadn’t even realised there was a hole in there but he had no time to lament on his unnecessary travels as he bolted down the nightmarish hallway, tripping over broken crates and soft scraps of flesh. The thuds against the metal softened when Johnny’s foot touched the lino outside 302 but they ascended in volume once he closed the distance between himself and 303. His heart thumped in his chest and his legs were weak from constant running, every nerve was on fire as he clutched the knob of 303’s door.   
There was a scream. Loud and frightened, punctuated by a dull thud as though a weight had collapsed in on itself.   
Johnny unlocked the door and burst in.

Blood, so much blood. The trail started from underneath Johnny’s feet and finished under Eileen as though she’d dragged herself to the centre of the room. Her exposed back was beaten a shade of pink Johnny had not saw on a human before and her skin had been carved with the numbers 20/21. In front of her stood the little boy, who looked at her, emotionless. Eileen reached out, her arm weak and placed her hand on his shoe, doing her best to look at him. She whispered to him in a voice so quiet Johnny could not decipher what she was saying. He couldn’t concentrate as he watched her blood soak into the beige carpet and drip down her skirting boards, ruining the soft, warm atmosphere she tried to create for her apartment. She moved forward, tried to look back to Johnny, frightened of who was there. Eileen then collapsed onto the lilac rug in front of them, her breathing non-existent.  
Johnny was too late, he had failed her.   
The little boy looked up at Johnny, his small green eyes staring at him as the world around them disintegrated.   
Those eyes. He’d saw them somewhere before.   
On the brink of collapse, Johnny remembered.   
They were just like that man’s.


	14. Chapter 14

Night had finally fallen on the small city of Ashfield and Johnny awoke to the blackness of the outside world, a world made visible by the screaming lights of an ambulance in the parking lot. Johnny’s head spun as he untangled himself from the bed sheets and the room rotated in his exhaustion as he stumbled over to the window. The ambulance began to pull out of the parking lot, lights still flashing and sirens screeching, taking Eileen away from the apartment. A police car chased after the ambulance, it’s own sirens copying the ear piercing screech of the vehicle in front of it and Johnny craved the silence he awoke to hours ago.  
“Eilee-ee-een!” Johnny fell back onto the bed, heaving sobs coming from his crooked mouth as he rolled around with the placard he forgot to store in his box. Once his theatrics subsided, Johnny got back into his living room, a feat made difficult from the tears in his eyes.

More notes had been placed under his door and part of him didn’t want to read them. There was no point, he failed Eileen, one of the nicest people he’d met since leaving San Francisco. Ignoring his emotions, Johnny picked up the red scrap of paper.  
_I don't think I can protect myself._ _  
_ _He's truly insane._ _  
_ _I can't hold on any longer._ _  
_ _His power can't be measured._ _  
_ _I was so scared today that I sealed off the back of the storage room._ _  
_ _I wonder if Eileen Galvin is okay._ _  
_ _She has no idea what's going on..._  
_But she's in danger nevertheless._

Johnny crumpled up the paper and threw it to the side of him. Totally worthless, the author was telling him useless information that no longer had any relevance, the only thing Johnny needed to know was how to escape this nightmare and the chances of that happening were about as likely as Claudette’s breasts not having cancer. Beside the scrap of paper was a card, depicting a succubus demon; a tall, thin woman ripping a man’s heart out. Johnny wanted to laugh and take a hit at Lisa the demon whore but he was too upset to joke. He didn’t even want to look inside Eileen’s bedroom for fear of the blood that might be in her room. Instead, he placed the talisman on the side and went to go check on the hole and face another uncertain predicament.  
Or not. By some unknown force or entity, the large hole in Johnny’s bathroom had been filled with cement, blocking him from travelling out of the apartment and into otherworlds.  
“Uhhh! What I’m meant to do now?”  
There was a few things Johnny could do. He could cry, he could clean his bathroom or he could sit on his sofa and wait for Walter to finally murder him. He decided on cleaning the bathroom. “It’s bullshit, I did not make this mess, I did nahhht.” Johnny moaned as he opened the door to his utility closet to search for his bleach and sponges.  
“Huh?” Before Johnny could rummage through his boxes, he noticed a strange stain on the wall, above where the washing machine had exploded all of the blood. At close distance, it looked like that demon on the card. Now, Johnny wasn’t a great mathematician (despite being a banker) but he knew how to add two and two. Leaving the storage closet door open, he quickly grabbed the talisman off the kitchen counter and brought it into the room. Aligning the card to the stain on the wall, Johnny carefully pressed them together.

The wall began to melt. The stain and blood disappeared into the concrete behind it and parts of the wall caved in, creating four equal squares equidistant from each other. Finally red text emerged from the centre of the four squares.  
_After he did the Ritual of the Holy_ _  
_ _Assumption, other worlds began to force their way_ _  
_ _into his universe and it began to swell_ _  
_ _horribly._ _  
_ _But his universe is different than ours_ _  
_ _\-- it has limits._ _  
_ _And in the limits of that universe,_ _  
_ _he rules as a king._ _  
_ _And in the deepest part of his kingdom_  
 _is his Mother._

The four squares surrounding the text seemed to coincide with the placards Johnny had accumulated during his travels, with words such as ‘Temptation’ and ‘Source’ written in the depressions. Johnny rushed into his bedroom to retrieve the fourth placard before picking up the other three from his storage box. When all four placards were counted for, Johnny began to slot them into their respective hole, waiting for something to happen. The wall harbouring the text collapsed, pieces of drywall crumbling to the ground and the four depressions submerged themselves under the paint. Soon, Johnny was staring face-to-face with another hole, perfectly circular and decorated in strange red symbols. He knew what to do.  
Johnny went back to his storage box and picked out some more bullets for his pistol and placed Richard’s revolver into the box. He weighed up his melee weapons but stuck with the rusty axe, preferring it’s sharp edges over the pipe’s range. Johnny straightened up and dusted himself off, he still needed to change his jeans which were ripped from the encounter with the dog so he walked back into his bedroom and swapped his Levis for a pair of beige trousers. While he was at it, he took off his shirt and replaced it with a black t-shirt and navy blazer. He was officially ready to kick some ass and avenge Eileen. When Johnny returned to the supply closet, he felt pretty unstoppable. He lifted his bad leg off the floor and started to wriggle back into the hole, ready for whatever Hell awaited him.

-

The room was cold, with a small gust of wind from a window nearby. Johnny tilted his head to get a better view but he had awoken on the floor again, directly underneath an operating light commonly seen in hospitals. Johnny sat up and took a look around, there was a filthy gurney to the side of him and an operating curtain to the other side, shielding him from that side of the hospital room. There was definitely something behind it, something was breathing heavily and there was an unmistakable sound of squelching. Johnny frowned, he hoped he hadn’t walked in on somebody’s sex life. A large shadow drew closer to Johnny, footsteps following it.  
The man from the apartment world staggered out from behind the curtain, hunched over like he was in pain though the strange grin on his unshaven face said otherwise. Blood was splattered all over his blue coat and he took a step closer to Johnny, who for the most part, was unaffected.  
“Oh hai there, strange man! A-ha-ha!”  
The man stopped and rolled his eyes. He had been planning this creepy, dramatic scene for at least an hour before Johnny arrived. He ignored it and continued forward.  
“Bye.” Johnny finally removed himself from the floor and departed through the grey doors to the left of him. He didn’t have time for the strange man’s shenanigans nor his creepy stance.

The main lobby of the hospital was even more depressing than usual. The posters that displayed upbeat families getting their flu vaccinations were torn down and replaced with posters of varying degrees of grey and the floor was littered in dead bat creatures, all oozing thick liquid onto the dust below. Johnny reminded himself to thank the creepy man for his troubles when he finished up with whatever he was doing in the operating room. Quite a few of the hospital doors were locked but eventually Johnny opened a heavy door leading to a medical office complete with stacks of shelves displaying medical charts, boxes and medication. A few desks were strewn around the room alongside broken wheeled chairs and one desk contained a sharp knife which Johnny decided to leave in favour of his axe. The office then led to a smaller room, clearly only used for one-to-one treatments. Opposite the window that overlooked the lobby was a whiteboard covered in photographs.  
“Eileen!” The photos showcased her injuries, lacerations, broken bones and bruises all over her body. The photos had been annotated by doctors, trying to find a reason for her brutal injuries and descriptions of treatment she’d need. In a strange feeling of hope, Johnny smiled. She was still alive.  
A small note on the computer desk confirmed Eileen’s state. She was alive, treated in a hospital room for which the key was missing. Johnny made a mental note to keep an eye out for any keys.

The lobby contained nothing else of interest apart from a small locker room where a hole was waiting for him in the furthest wall. There was a way for him and Eileen to escape. The stairwell was in the most northern point of the lobby, next to an elevator that looked as though it didn’t function. On the floor amidst the dead bats and filth, was a purple handbag. Johnny picked it up by it’s thin leather strap and held it at arm's length. Part of the clasp was stained with a red liquid that Johnny assumed was blood. The bag most likely belonged to Eileen so Johnny threw it on his shoulder and opened the door to the stairwell, feeling five times more fabulous.  
“I COMING EILEEN!” Johnny shouted as he kicked down the door to the second floor. “I COMING TO RES- OUCH!” Johnny had no idea where that wheelchair had come from, he just knew that it hurt like a bitch and that it was trying to flatten him like a steamroller.  
“Go away, wheelchair!” The front wheel got caught in Johnny’s mane of hair, ripping out a chunk as he pulled away. “You bastard!” He shouted, rubbing his bald patch and readying his trusty axe for a good swing. The blade sunk deep into the seat of the wheelchair but nothing happened. The chair continued to push into Johnny, knocking against his shins and sending pain down his torn leg.  
“OWWWW!”  
He had no choice but to run. He ran to the nearest room, brushing against the elevator as he did so, startling himself from the mechanical whirring it emitted as it activated. Johnny closed the door, hoping that the wheelchairs weren’t smart enough to know how to open them. Directly in front of him was a small ceramic vase, filled with dead flowers which hung over the edge. Johnny looked inside it for a key but found nothing except a white candle behind it. He shrugged and placed it inside Eileen’s bag for safe keeping, he could always use candles especially for setting the mood with beautiful ladies.

Johnny left the room and suddenly found himself being chased by a demon wheelchair. He had no time to investigate the room opposite to him, so he ran along the hospital hallway before seeking refuge in another hospital room. The room was decorated exactly the same as the first room Johnny looked inside, though instead of housing a vase, this room housed a small bronze statue of a snake. In the snake’s mouth something shone under the flickering fluorescent light.  
“Thank you, snake!” Johnny removed the key from the snake’s mouth and before he had time to even think about putting it in his pocket, a metal cage descended on him, trapping him in the room.  
“Wowwww.” Johnny looked up. He hadn’t even realised there was a cage above him. “How I meant to get out?” His English was becoming exceedingly worse in his tiredness.  
Johnny tried to open the cage door, pushing against the steel frame. It was no use, it was locked. His next course of action was to fling himself against the frame, hoping in some confused way that the bars would break under his force. Nothing.  
For the next twenty minutes, Johnny kicked, punched and screamed within his cage, growing more and more frustrated with eat minute. Walter had finally done it, Walter had beaten him. In desperation, Johnny sunk to the floor, head in hands.  
“How I get out? HOW?” He picked up the key and dangled it in front of his face. On the keychain, there was some tiny writing.  
_Key for Room 21 (2F). Also Unlocks that Stupid Cage._  
“Oh…” Johnny said, realising. “Ah-ha-ha!”  
Johnny pushed the key into the lock and opened the cage door, freeing himself from the confines of the metal.  
“Now to get Eileen!”

Room 21 was the penultimate door on the right side of the corridor and Johnny managed to get there after several bashings from several demonic wheelchairs. Pushing the door open, Johnny limped inside Eileen’s hospital room.  
Eileen lay on the dirty mattress in front of him, leg bandaged and arm in a cast. Half of her face was covered by a bandage that obscured her vision and there were numerous bruises and cuts over her pale body. Medical tools such as scalpels and needles had been placed on the table by the door and judging by the cleanliness of them, they had not been used yet. Johnny swallowed, they had to get out of here. He approached her bedside and she stirred in her sleep though she did not wake. Johnny decided to wake her peacefully, as not to startle her.  
“OH HAI EILEEN!”  
Eileen’s green eye shot open and darted straight towards Johnny. She quickly sprang up from the bed and began to shriek, practically climbing up the wall to escape Johnny.  
“Eileen! It’s me, Johnny! You know better, right? I’m your neighbour!”  
Eileen screamed even louder and Johnny football tackled her onto the bed and her screams quietened into whimpers.  
“Please get off…” She whispered, as she felt Johnny crush the arm that wasn’t broken. He pushed himself off her.  
“Are you okay, Eileen?” He placed his hand on her shoulder and she allowed it, too exhausted to fight it.  
“What are you doing here?” Her voice was barely audible, fear in every syllable.  
Johnny, however remained cheerful despite the dangerous situation they were in. “I come to get you. I went through holes and now I’m here.”  
“What are you talking about? Am I supposed to believe that?” Anger was slowly taking over her fear and Johnny wasn’t about to stand there and take it.  
“I wouldn’t have any secrets from you, I’m your neighbour!” His voice was starting to raise. “I gave you two hours of my _time_.”  
“Okay, okay!” Eileen quietened him with her good arm. “I believe you. I’m sorry but I just feel so scared.”  
“Don’t worry about it, Eileen.” Johnny was good with reassurance. “I have a friend who knew a girl and she cheated a lot. One of them found out about it, beat her up so bad they had to open a hospital on Guerrero Street.” Johnny finished off his story with a laugh, Eileen looked horrified and there was an awkward silence.  
“We should get going.” Eileen gestured towards the door after a minute of silence.  
“Good thinking, Eileen. I will take you to the hole.” Johnny picked her up by the scruff of her neck and dragged her to the door.  
“Great…”

And so, their adventure continued.


	15. Chapter 15

In the lobby of the hospital, Johnny escorted Eileen to the storage room where he found the hole. A trail of blood led up it, the same colour as the strange symbols around the hole’s perimeter, as though something had been dragged out of it. Eileen paid little attention to the holes and instead focused on the lockers on the side, trying to peer into them.    
“I don’t think there’s anything inside.” She said, trying to look in the darkness. Johnny turned his attention to a little wheeled table to the side of the hole. On a chipped plate was a nutrition drink which seemed safe to drink given it’s sealed cap.    
“Eileen!” She turned to face Johnny, ignoring the lockers. “I have something for you!” Johnny said this in a sing-song sort of way and Eileen raised her eyebrows.    
“What have you got?” She tried to look behind Johnny who had hidden the drink behind his back.    
“Just a little something.” He walked closer to her and placed the drink in her good hand and she looked at it suspiciously.    
“What is it?”    
“It’s a nutrient drink. It’s good for helping cuts and bruises.”    
“Oh,” Eileen gave Johnny a smile, the first proper smile he’d received since the nightmare began. “That’s really thoughtful Johnny, thank you.”   
“Anything for my neighbour!” The sing-song voice had returned and Eileen noticed something tucked away under Johnny’s arm.    
“Is that my bag?” She pointed to the purple leather under Johnny’s arm.    
“Ohh, yeah.” He took it off his shoulder and opened it up, allowing Eileen to place the drink inside. Eileen paused when she saw the white candle inside but she didn’t ask any questions. Finally, Johnny gave her back her handbag.    
“Let’s go into the hole, huh?”    
Grabbing Eileen by the hand, Johnny yanked her closer to the hole and heard her heels squeak against the floor as he forcefully dragged her closer. Johnny climbed into the hole but Eileen stared blankly at him, refusing to go inside.    
“You catch up with me, Eileen!” Johnny called to her as he jump-squatted deeper and deeper inside. 

-

“Hai, Eileen!” Johnny yelled as he awoke on his bed. He expected to see her somewhere in his room, either on his leather chair or sitting on his bed but she was nowhere to be seen.    
“Eileen?” Johnny opened his bedroom door and called down the hallway, hoping that she had wandered into the living room. As Johnny left his bedroom, he noticed that the air in his apartment felt weirdly heavy, similar to the air one experiences when they get off a plane in a different country. Not that Johnny had ever been on a plane. Or a ferry. He was born in New Orleans, despite what people might think.    
Shards of broken glass were scattered over Johnny’s carpet and when he took a step closer he realised that his ceiling fan had collapsed onto his coffee table, destroying a photograph of a spoon in the process.    
“You pay for that, you bastard!” Johnny waved a clenched fist in the air, hoping that Walter was watching. Johnny decided to go back into the hole but when he approached the storage room door, he noticed a small envelope underneath the padlocked door. Johnny opened the letter and began to read it, murmuring important points to himself.   
“Small key… going down… Truth. Joseph.” In the bottom of the envelope was the small key mentioned in the letter. With the key in his hand and a plethora of weapons by his side, Johnny got back into the hole.

-

“Johnny!” Eileen’s surprised greet woke Johnny from his sleep and he found himself sitting on the floor of the hospital storage room.   
“Oh hai, Eileen.” He said groggily, throwing his body over the table to help himself stand. He was nearly knocked out when Eileen threw her arm around him and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “A-ha-ha…”   
“I’ve been here the whole time! And I didn’t see any hole either!” Eileen’s panic was starting to return. “I can’t stay here by myself, I’ll be cursed. I know it.”   
“Okay, I try not to go in holes anymore.” Johnny paused, thoughtful. “Hey, Eileen, you know somebody called Joseph?”    
“Joseph? Yeah, he was the guy who lived in your apartment before you. I think he was a journalist or something, he disappeared about six months before you moved in.” She stopped. “But towards the end, he started acting really weird…”   
A shiver ran down Johnny’s spine. Somewhere in the back of his memory he could recall Frank Sunderland mention the previous tenant. He said something about a wall.    
“We should go.” 

Now that the elevator had been called to the second floor, it revealed a passageway underneath, sealed off by a rusty gate. Johnny and Eileen traversed the hospital lobby and Johnny placed the key inside the lock, gaining them both entrance to whatever lay ahead of them. It was a large staircase, manufactured from grey stone and surrounded by walls covered in mould the colour of Denny’s stews.    
“Johnny, look.” Eileen pointed to the bottom of the stairs, where two figures slowly climbed closer to the top. Johnny took a step down to confront the figures but as they closed the distance, both Johnny and Eileen realised that they weren’t human.    
“Johnny!” Eileen limped over to join him, handbag clutched tight. “What are they?”    
“Don’t worry Eileen! I keep you safe!” Johnny rushed over to the figures and instantly regret his decision. They were tall, much taller than Johnny and nearing seven foot in height and with skin the same colour as the mould. Their limbs were covered in scars and scabs, hastily stitched up using black thread and their heads had been split in half, revealing flesh the colour of dried blood. Swallowing, Johnny sunk his axe into the one closest to him before pulling it out and then firing two bullets into its abdomen. The monster expelled foul gas and dropped to the floor, its lifeless body tumbling down to the bottom of the staircase.    
“A-ha-HAGH!” Johnny was lifted into the air by the second monster, its long, broken fingernails digging into his blazer. Johnny attempted to attack but the monster caught him and disarmed him, throwing the axe down the stairs and next to its dead friend. The monster lifted its arm, holding a metal plank covered in rust and was about to strike.    
Suddenly, Johnny was dropped. The monster turned around to face Eileen, who was hitting it with her purple bag. The clasp got caught on the monster’s shoulder and peeled off a layer of its rotting skin, causing it to shriek in pain. The monster lifted its arm once more, pipe intent on Eileen until Johnny fired a third bullet into the back of its head. The monster’s head exploded and it hit the ground, leaking blood from its open wound. Johnny and Eileen looked at each other, breathless.    
“Thanks a lot!” Johnny said, getting himself up off the floor.   
“You too.” Eileen said, shaking blood off her bag. 

Ignoring the dead monster, Eileen and Johnny continued to walk down the rest of the stairs in an awkward silence that Johnny decided to make even more awkward.    
“Monster, that was cool.”   
Eileen cocked an eyebrow but couldn’t stop herself laughing at the sheer ridiculousness that was Johnny.    
“Yeah, you can say that.” She said whilst Johnny looked confused at her laughs.    
They eventually stopped next to the first dead monster and stood outside another door. Johnny recognised the symbol on the door as the one that decorated the holes he found in various worlds. Next to the door, written in the same font as the note on his own door were the words ‘Ever downward’. Johnny pulled the door open.    
The first thing he felt was the air. The temperature had dropped considerably and Johnny felt as though he was standing in the middle of a field.    
“Where are we?”   
Johnny could not answer her question. They were standing on a path made of planks of metal, twisting down into the depths of the unknown. They were practically suspended in air as thick fog shielded them from the view below. On one side of the walkway were crumbling walls in varying degrees of off-white and beige but neither Eileen or Johnny could decipher what was keeping them up. 

They kept walking down the path, Johnny occasionally slowing down to match his pace with the injured Eileen who took longer to walk. At one point the path split off in two, with the shorter path leading off to a hole but Johnny decided to ignore it as he felt bad for leaving Eileen behind (especially with a murderer lurking in the unknown). Eventually, the path stopped in front of a door, identical to the one they saw in the hospital. With bated breath, Johnny pulled it open.    
And he was back in the subway.


	16. Chapter 16

“This is the Ashfield subway.” Eileen looked at the corkboard in front of her, trying to make out the illegible information it displayed. “I can just about read the platform names.”    
“Oh yeah, I know. I already been here.”    
“What?” Eileen turned to Johnny who seemed disinterested. “How?”   
“I already tell you, I go through holes.”   
Eileen rolled her eyes, knowing she probably wouldn’t get any more information from the enigma that was Johnny.    
“Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”   
The two ventured out of the subway corridor and found themselves in the main corridor of the subway which connected the South Ashfield entrance to the turnstiles. Johnny, who was accustomed to the haphazard otherworlds, remained totally calm as they progressed towards the turnstiles. Eileen on the other hand, seemed on edge.    
“This isn’t right…” She avoided touching the walls as though she was frightened they were covered in something more than dust. “I used to come here all the time as a little girl. It was always so  _ clean. _ ”   
“Uh huh.” Johnny wasn’t listening.    
“I remember one time, when I was young, I saw a homeless guy sleeping by the Kings Street line. I felt so bad for him that I gave him my doll and looking back he seemed really- Johnny are you even listening?”    
“No.”    
“Forget it.” Eileen huffed, limping behind Johnny until they both finally reached the turnstile. 

The air in the turnstile lobby was heavy and cold, as though an arctic wind was blowing from somewhere deep beneath the stairs. Eileen shivered as she trailed behind Johnny and her heels squeaked against the floor as she noticed something.    
“Johnny?”   
“Yeah?”   
“I think your hair’s falling out.” She pointed to the floor where thick, black clumps of hair were scattered. Johnny shoved the axe between his legs and began to desperately feel his scalp. Thankfully, his beautiful ebony locks were still attached.    
“No, my hair is okay.” Johnny looked puzzled at the strands of hair surrounding him and Eileen and the two of them grew more confused when they found the hair leading to the staircase on the Kings Street line.    
“Johnny,” Eileen was pale and shaking. “Look.”   
Lying behind the turnstile was a figure whose face was shrouded in the same black hair scattered on the floor. With shuddering gasps, the figure clawed at the floor, its broken fingernails scratching at the filthy surface and pulling itself from under the turnstile. It finally stood up, black hair covering its face like a veil and bruised, broken skin visible under the harsh fluorescent lighting.    
“Oh hai, Cynthia!”   
Cynthia’s neck cracked in the direction of Johnny and she smiled, broken teeth on display. Her body became slack as she floated towards them, hair dangling over her face as though she was a puppet. Johnny’s smile faded and Eileen remained petrified.    
“Johnny, we need to go…” Eileen gestured towards the turnstiles behind them and Johnny’s usually vacant expression melted into one of pure frustration as he remembered hurling the Lynch Street token across his living room.    
“Aughhhhhhhh!!! I left it at home!”    
Cynthia continued her way over to them and Johnny was starting to feel her heavy presence drill into his head.    
“I think I’ve got mine, just kill that thing!”    
“I cannot kill her!” Johnny turned to Cynthia, eyes crinkled in pleading. “Cynthia please talk to me, PLEASE!” 

Cynthia’s hand went straight through Johnny’s chest and Johnny could feel the compression in his lungs as though Cynthia was squeezing the life out of him. Johnny swung the axe into her arm, taking off a layer of rotted skin and she retracted her arm from his chest.    
“You’re no good, Cynthia!” Johnny cried as he hacked away at her shoulder, slightly knocking the ghost to the side. She growled and made another grab for Johnny who quickly jumped behind the ticket office.    
“Johnny! I’ve got the token!”    
Behind him, Eileen waved a silver token in the air, almost victorious. As Cynthia watched in mild curiosity, Johnny buried the axe into her side before joining Eileen by the Lynch Street turnstile. Eileen placed the token in the coin slot and the two of them tumbled into the stairwell and away from Cynthia.   
“This way!” Johnny pointed to the stairs and grabbed Eileen’s free hand, dragging her away from the ghost.  

“Oh my God, is that  _ blood? _ ” Eileen walked closer to a wall boarded off by shelving, inspecting it.    
“Yeah.”   
Eileen turned around, mouth agape. “Does any of this bother you?”    
“Nah.”   
She rolled her eyes for the millionth time and wandered down a corridor that Johnny had previously ignored. He followed her and noticed that she was holding something in her hand.    
“What’s that?”   
“Looks like a riding crop,” Eileen gave it an experimental wack. “What it’s doing on a chair down here is anybody’s guess.”    
“They cannot tell you, it’s confidential.”   
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Eileen said, brushing him off. “Let’s go down the stairs.”

The stairs led to the same train tracks Johnny had previously visited, complete with the same set of stationary trains and broken lighting. Eileen trailed after Johnny, her footsteps uneven due to her limp but she managed to keep up regardless. She stopped at the foot of the staircase and pointed to a dimly lit vending machine.    
“Is that a dollar sign?”    
A red sign was painted on the machine, a crude number one and a symbol that neither Johnny or Eileen recognised. Johnny sighed. He was starting to get hungry and a snack wouldn’t go amiss and he decided to make a sandwich the next time he went through a hole.    
The two of them turned north and opened the employee door at the top of the train line. It was similar to the pink-tinged room Johnny had previously been in, though there was no hole for him to create a sandwich. There was, however, a ladder.    
“You stay here.” Johnny gestured towards the ground, commanding Eileen to stay put. She looked somewhat offended but didn’t complain as she watched Johnny shimmy down the ladder. 

Once again, Johnny was in the underground Hell of the train station. Feeling far more confident, he calmly walked over to the ladder on the other side to get to the other side of the train tracks.   
“Uhhhhh…” Black sludge appeared on the pulsing wall and Johnny soon found himself losing all confidence and sprinting to the other side of the room and scrambling up the ladder into the pink room. Fuck ghosts.   
Once in the safety of the pink room, Johnny leaned on the desk and caught his breath. He was never going to get used to running for his life every ten minutes. Once his minor heart attack had subsided, Johnny climbed into the hole on the adjacent wall, the sandwich still on his mind. 


	17. Chapter 17

“ _You are my rose, you are my rose, you are my ro-ooose…_!” Johnny was standing in the corner of his kitchen, applying pesto to two slices of white bread. He’d decided that if he was going to make a sandwich, he was going to make a damn good one. Killing monsters and travelling from dimension to dimension made a man hungry, after all. Beside him, the bacon in his frying pan sizzled beautifully, just about drowning out the obnoxious ticking of his clock above his TV. Johnny made a mental note to change the batteries after the ordeal was over.   
Johnny added some artichoke to the pan, frying it quickly until the vegetable had become translucent. He then drained the fat from the pan and added both the bacon and the artichoke to his sandwich. Johnny frowned at his creation; something was missing. He then dove into his fridge and pulled out a bowl of pineapple chunks sitting in their juice. Carefully, like an artist finalising their masterpiece, Johnny dropped a few chunks of pineapple onto his sandwich. Perfect.  
“Oh hai, sandwich! Ha-ha!” Johnny said before taking a large bite out of his sandwich. The ticking of the clock was starting to drill into his head now, so Johnny decided he’d finish his lunch in the comfort of his bedroom. Walking out of the kitchen, Johnny glanced at the door, hoping in some strange way that the locks would have vanished. However, the locks had not been removed and instead, a small envelope had been pushed under the door.  
 _Mommy, I’ll giv you this so pleez wake up soon.  
_ _It’s inside my toy train._  
Johnny crumpled the letter and placed it on his kitchen counter but the envelope was not totally empty. Inside, was a tiny, yellow toy key.   
“Huh?” Johnny held the key up to the light, looking for some sort of clue for what it was but he found nothing. Sighing, he placed it into his pocket and continued to eat his sandwich.

-

“Where have you been?” Eileen shouted as Johnny climbed back up the ladder and into the office room. She looked pissed, evident by her only eye glaring at Johnny as he scrambled to his feet.   
“I get hungry, I go eat, I fight ghosts, jeez Eileen!” Johnny flicked a piece of pineapple off his trousers where it landed directly opposite Eileen’s heel.   
“You _ate?_ I stood in this room for two hours whilst you _ate?_ ”   
“Yah.”  
Eileen curled her fist in rage but said nothing, her lips in a thin, angry line. Johnny pointed to the door.   
“Let’s go.”   
“...unbelievable.” Eileen muttered as she and Johnny left the office. Johnny remained totally oblivious to her anger and played with the toy key in his pocket, letting it dip in and out of his fingers. Eileen stopped halfway through the platform and peered inside an open carriage, observing the mess.   
“Do you think we should have a look inside?”   
“Nah. Only box in there.” Johnny replied, still messing around with the plastic key. A few of the cells in his brain began to crackle with intelligence, as his brain synthesized the information.   
_Key. Box. Key. Box. E=MC^2. You are my rose. Key-Box. Open?_  
“Oh yeah, Eileen. I have a key!” Johnny presented the small key to his friend, who squinted as she tried to get a better look at it.   
“Where did you find that?” She inquired, trying to make out if there was any writing on it.   
“Found it in my apartment. I should probably see if it fits the box.”   
“Wait, what?”   
“Yah. The mailman bring me weird things now. I don’t even remember ordering them.”  
“Huh. That’s...strange,” Eileen stroked her chin with her thumb and index finger. “Do you reckon those weird deliveries have anything to do with what’s going on?”  
“Nah. Just mailman getting confused.” Johnny shrugged it off and gestured towards the open door of the train.

The two of them stepped into the carriage and began to work their way through the maze of carriages and metal barriers. Eileen wrinkled her nose as they passed seats filled with soaked newspapers and dismembered mannequins, clearly not enthusiastic about the whole situation. Eventually, both Johnny and Eileen found the box, a small rusted thing with faded paint. It had been sealed shut by a bronze coloured lock, with a tiny keyhole fitted for a child’s key. Johnny withdrew the key from his pocket and placed it into the hole before turning it. The lock gave an audible click before falling from the rusted chain. The inside of the box reveleaved a dirty coin, no bigger than a nickel. Beneath the fine layer of dirt, written in red paint was the same symbol on the vending machine.   
“Eileen, do you want a snack? Chocolate? Rice, that’s cool.” Johnny held up the coin to Eileen, who shook her head.   
“I’d feel weird eating here…”   
“Whatever.” Johnny placed the coin into his pocket, leaving the key in the lock. “I’m going to get a snack.”

After navigating through the carriages and tripping over random bits of scrap metal, the two stepped back onto the platform and made a beeline for the vending machine. The machine was still lit and displayed rows of various snacks such as chocolate bars and chips. Johnny wondered what dimensional chocolate tasted like. He placed the coin into the machine and selected B3, the shelf that showcased a chocolate he’d never tried before, something called _Walter-nut Whip_. The shelf never moved. Instead, a metallic clunk hit the dispenser and when Johnny went to investigate, he was confronted by a set of keys.   
“Murder scene key…” Eileen whispered. “I could have sworn I saw ambulances here earlier today!”   
“Yah. I saw her get killed.” A sudden sadness swept over Johnny as he remembered the look of terror in Cynthia’s face as she realised her time had come. Then again, it was a similar look to the one she gave him when they first met.  
“I know where it is, Eileen.”

- 

“Aghh! I kill you, you bastard!” Cynthia had cornered Johnny in the staircase hallway leading back up to the turnstiles. She gave ragged breaths, punctuated with a heaving sob and she staggered closer to Johnny with her bloody hand outstretched. Johnny readied his pistol and aimed for her head, shooting her twice in the left side of her face. She moaned and fell back but retained her balance, still intent on pulling Johnny’s heart out of his chest.   
“I fed up with you, Cynthia!” Johnny charged at the stumbling ghost, pistol-whipping her in the face with such force that she flew straight back into the wall she emerged from. Now with some bought time, Johnny hastily opened the office Cynthia had died in and shut the door behind him. The blood covering most of the room had long dried, and was now starting to congeal between the buttons of the intercom. Grimacing, Johnny tiptoed over the pools of blood until he was standing at the office window and looking out into the lobby. As he reached out to finger the intercom buttons, his hand instead felt something wedged between the control panels.   
“This train handle or something?” Johnny said as he picked the object up. The handle was found alongside paperwork, which had been knocked off the desks adjacent to the intercom. Though damaged from the dried blood, the paperwork showed an engineer’s sketch of a train and featured the train handle’s exact location. Johnny held the paper up to the light to see through the blood and he could just about decipher the name of the train.  
_The Silent Flyer  
Kings Street Line to Pleasant River to Hazel Street Station_

 

“I know where that is!” Johnny’s mind raced as he remembered the stationary train he passed whilst running away from a dog demon. He had no time to investigate it due to Cynthia’s panicked cries over the intercom. Now, he had an excuse. Leaving the office, Johnny noticed a small ticket lying among Cynthia’s belongings. As he picked it up, he saw that is was in fact her commuter ticket, a small card which allowed her to use both the Lynch and King Street lines as many times as she wanted. Johnny shoved it into his pocket and hurried back down the stairs to retrieve Eileen.

-

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Eileen watched as Johnny attempted to shove the train handle into its respective place.    
“Yah! Read the instructions, Eileen!” Johnny shouted, starting to become very irate.   
Eileen sighed as she read the instructions above the train door.  
“Are you twisting it as you push?”   
“YAH! I BEEN TWISTING FOR LIKE AN HOUR NOW!”  
“Actually, it’s been about five minutes,” Eileen replied drily as she watched Johnny continue to thrust the handle into the hole. She blinked and exhaled. “Oh my God. Johnny, it’s the wrong way.”   
Johnny suddenly stopped penetrating the hole and slowly twisted the handle into the correct position.   
“Oh. I knew that.”  

Johnny inserted the handle for the final time and gave a hard twist. The train jolted to life, a low humming echoing throughout the empty carriages. Without warning, the train pushed forwards, throwing Eileen into the conductor’s chair and Johnny into the window. The train then stopped, apparently only moving a few meters.   
“That it?” Johnny pushed himself up from the controls, making sure he still had all his equipment.   
Eileen peered out of the conductor’s carriage and down the rest of the train. She grabbed Johnny and pointed to an open carriage door.   
“Look!” In the first carriage, the train doors were wide open and now revealed a small staircase leading out. Stepping out onto the new platform, Johnny winced as the overwhelming smell of blood attacked him. The same blood from the office was splashed against the tiles of the staircase walkway and grime clung to the indents between the tiles. At the bottom of the staircase was another door, the same off-crimson colour as the walls.  
“Do you think this is the way out?” Eileen asked, her voice suddenly nervous.   
“We only have one way to check.” Johnny said as he opened the rusting door.

The door opened to a corridor, with another almost identical door at the very end. The only difference was that the door opposite them was decorated in a red symbol and Johnny recognised it as the one he saw when he first returned to the subway. A strange sense of confidence filled him as he realised that this door was likely his and Eileen’s redemption from the forsaken subway. Eileen began to walk across the concrete floor, her heels clicking against the hard surface below. Johnny followed suit, his own boots mimicking the sound of her heels. They were not hallway across the corridor when the door behind them creaked open.   
“It’s him!” Eileen pointed to the figure in the doorway, illuminated by the flickering luminescent light. She grabbed Johnny’s arm and urged him to move but Johnny stood his ground.   
“Oh, hai again, strange man!”  
The stranger, looked at Johnny and groaned. “Not you again.”   
“Ah-ha-ha. You look great!” Johnny started to walk over to the stranger, despite Eileen attempting to drag him away.   
The stranger took a step backwards and dug his hand deep into his coat pocket, his face unreadable beneath his curtain of dirty blonde hair.   
“Johnny! We need to go! NOW.” Eileen was near sobbing now as she fought with the motionless Johnny. He continued to watch the stranger as he slowly drew something out of his coat.   
“Strange man…?”   
Searing pain ran through Johnny’s leg as he dropped to his knee. Eileen screamed and draped herself over him, desperately trying to pick him back up with her one arm. The stranger gave a deep, monotonous laugh and aimed his handgun at both Eileen and Johnny again.  
“You tramp!” Johnny shouted as the pain throbbed through his body. “Why? Why?!”  
The stranger said nothing but gave an odd smile as he squeezed the trigger of his gun. Johnny fell backwards, the bullet missing him by about an inch. Eileen scrambled to her feet and pulled him up, while the stranger reached back into his coat for more bullets. The two of them bolted towards the door, pushing it open and trapping the stranger within the world. When their vision became clearer and their adrenaline levels lowered, they realised they were back in the spiral, with the same destroyed concrete slabs, broken metal fencing and chilling gust of wind.   
Clutching his leg, Johnny turned to Eileen.   
“I need to find a hole.”  
She nodded and they continued their descent.


	18. Chapter 18

As expected, the floor beneath the door to the subway had a hole carved into a wall situated on the edge of a walkway. Johnny and Eileen limped down the spiral staircase with Eileen turning behind every couple of steps to ensure that the man was not pursuing them. When they reached the hole, Johnny rested against the metal railing and examined his leg.  
“Aughhhhhhhh!!” Blood was seeping into his Levi jeans and the bullet was still lodged in his leg. Eileen watched silently as Johnny groaned and flailed his arms in pain. He grabbed his leg and stumbled to the hole, which Eileen was still blind to.  
“I go get my leg fixed Eileen.” He pulled himself into the hole and hissed in agony as the rough brickwork scraped against his leg.  
“Johnny,” Eileen called suddenly. “Come back soon, okay?”  
Johnny nodded. “In a few minutes, bitch.”  
Eileen’s offended scoff was the last thing Johnny heard as he drifted through the hole’s dimensional barrier.

Once conscious, Johnny hobbled into his living room and dived into his medicine cabinet beneath the sink. The clock was still ticking frantically and the very sound of it created an oddly oppressive feeling in Johnny’s head. Shaking it off as shock from the bullet, Johnny lifted up his jeans and began to prod at the wound with a set of sterilised tweezers.  
“Ouch! You bastard!” Johnny cursed at the bullet which had settled itself nicely in his leg muscle. Thankfully, it didn’t penetrate the bone.  
“Ha-ha. Stupid strange man can’t aim.” Johnny pulled the bullet out and dropped it on his kitchen floor. His leg stung like hell and Johnny braced himself for the antiseptic he was about to pour all over it. He popped the cap off the bottle and slowly let it drip onto his leg.  
“Haughhhh-augh!” The red-hot burning sensation of the liquid was almost too much for Johnny to bear and the faces he pulled were contorted and grotesque, but that was usual. He proceeded to stitch himself up and bandaged the wound, placing a spare roll of bandage in his deep pocket in case he needed to redress it. After a quick costume change into blue suit pants, Johnny was ready to go back into the madness. He shouted something incomprehensible as he wriggled through.

-

“You’re back.” Eileen watched Johnny pass through the wall and collapse onto the floor.  
“Yah, I told you I be a few minutes.”  
“Yeah well, I found a nutrition drink lying around. I thought you’d want it.” Eileen passed the drink over to the stumbling Johnny who took it off her hands.  
“Thanks, Eileen.” He unscrewed the top and took a swig of the drink. The drink still had that alcoholic-aniseed taste which was still a whole lot better than scotchka. The searing pain in Johnny’s leg dulled and faded to a blissful numbness.  
“Thank you, Eileen. This is a beautiful health drink. Good thinking!”  
The mentioned woman raised her eyebrows slightly. There was still underlying offence of being called a bitch but she did not address it. She instead pointed to the staircase.  
“We should get going.”  
Another flight or so down the staircase and the two were introduced to another door baring the same strange symbol they had both been accustomed to. A sense of dread settled in Johnny’s stomach as he opened he pushed open the door.

It was a strong smell. The scent of woodland, decomposing leaves and cool night air. Stepping into the world, Johnny knew exactly where he was. He was in the cemetery in the forest world surrounded by disintegrating tombstones and fallen foliage. Fantastic.  
“Is this…the woods near Silent Hill?” Eileen looked around in disbelief and for the first time since they grouped up, Johnny noticed the extent of her injuries. Her bruised skin had purpled since they encountered Walter and, perhaps this was a trick of the light, but her bruises appeared to be _moving_.  
“…yah.” Johnny’s eyes moved over to a torch laying in the corner of the graveyard. He walked over and picked up two smaller, unlit torches propped up next to it. He lit them and passed one to Eileen.  
“It pretty dark out here.”  
“Yeah, thanks…” She held the torch in her good arm and smiled. The smile faded when she heard the door click open once more.

Stepping into the graveyard was none other than Walter Sullivan. With his cool expression and greasy hair, he looked like every grunge singer if they swapped guitars for guns. Johnny actually thought this sounded like an interesting movie concept and jotted it down. Before he could think of the main characters, Eileen dragged him through the heavy metal doors to the south of the vicinity.  
She turned her attention to a well hidden in the darkness and rushed over to investigate.  
“Keep watch!” She yelled as she examined it with her torch. Johnny did just that. In one hand he held his own torch and the other was his handgun. All he had to do was wait for Walter to walk on through.  
When the doors opened and Walter emerged from the graveyard, Johnny shot him rapidly. Each bullet hit him directly in the chest but Walter merely staggered backwards, not even bleeding. He raised his own gun at Johnny who ran to the side for cover. His pistol was empty and he rummaged in his pockets for ammunition as Walter advanced on him. This was it. He was going to die.  
“Why? Why is this happening to me?”  
Eileen was still trying to fish something out of the well and she was too far away to help. The only thing she could do was escape.  
“Come on Eileen!” Johnny cried in desperation.  
“DID SOMEBODY CALL?”

Out of nowhere a man clad in blue overalls ran behind Walter and jumped on his back. He proceeded to try and choke the killer with a neckerchief and Walter struggled to throw him off. The man looked up from behind Walter. It was Kevin Rowland from Dexys Midnight Runners!  
“Oh hai, Kevin!”  
“Alright?” Kevin replied in a thick Brummie accent as he wrestled with Walter.  
“What the hell is going on?” Eileen screamed as she tucked an object under her arm.  
“The author thought it would be funny if she included me in the story. I’m here to buy you some time!”  
“GET OFF!” Walter continued to thrash but Kevin maintained his grasp.  
“I won’t be here much longer, you both need to leave!”  
“Bye!” Johnny waved to Kevin as he and Eileen ran towards the gate at the bottom of the area.  
“Ta-ra!” Kevin called back as he faded from reality.

Both Johnny and Eileen ran through the next area, dodging rabid dog monsters and moth creatures attracted to the pale lights of the lampposts. They eventually reached Wish House orphanage in the centre of the world though it had burned down sometime after Jasper’s untimely demise. The scent of burned wood was overwhelming and heat still radiated in the ashes of the building. Somewhere beneath that rubble was likely the charred, cooked body of Jasper. Eileen took a seat on the wooden platform.  
“I found this in the well.” She held up a doll’s head to Johnny who frowned.  
“It’s just a little something.”  
“Yeah, it’s a dolls head. Kinda weird place for it to be, I wonder if it belonged to the kids.”  
“Let’s go look, huh?”

Scattered amidst the rubble and burned grass of the orphanage was various toys and playpens, all of which had slowly rotted to the passage of time. Though there were some dolls scattered in the grass, none of them were decapitated. Johnny turned his attention to the rubble on the platform. Walking on the destroyed wood, he saw a wheelchair with a blackened body sitting in it. His stomach dropped and he hoped it wasn’t Jasper since its head and limbs were missing. For the second time, Johnny’s single braincell crackled with electricity.  
“Eileen!”  
“Yeah?” She was sitting in the grass playing with a doll which was weird.  
“Put the head on this dead guy!”  
Eileen recoiled. “I’m not going to do that.” She limped over and passed the head to Johnny. It fit the body precisely.  
“Look!” Eileen pointed at a memo on the ground. The paper was still intact, hinting it had been placed after the orphanage burned. Together they read it.  
Though my body be destroyed,

_I will not let you pass here._   
_To prepare for the Receiver of Wisdom..._   
_I cut my body into five pieces and hid them in the darkness._   
_When my body is once again whole, the path to below will be opened._   
_If you are the Receiver of Wisdom, you will understand my words._   
_The ritual has begun..._

“He’s still missing his arms and legs.” Eileen noted and Johnny nodded.  
“Yah. They probably around here somewhere.”  
“We should start looking,” Eileen clutched her now unlit torch and pointed to the door to the left of the orphanage. “We should clear the north first.”  
And with that, Johnny and Eileen continued into the night.  



End file.
